Absolutely love this series. Great for both young girls and boys.

I think I'd have loved this book when I was eight (well, if the book had existed when I was eight, which it didn't).

As it is, now that I'm 38, it's really a tad too simplistic, too straightforward, with everything just being too easy for Daine - yes, in spite of all those struggles we got to see, there was never any hint of actual danger, or obstacles that couldn't be passed, and frankly I'm getting a little tired of how nearly every animal just jumps at a chance to be of assistance and do everything she wants (and the very, very few who don't are presented as rather unpleasant creatures).

On the other hand, it was still a fast, engaging read, even if 90% of the book seemed to be an endless cycle of "Daine talks with animals / Daine sees something through yet another animal's eyes / Daine and her animal friends go for another walk". And I'm a tree-hugger at heart, so the environmentalist message, much stronger in this book than the first, while eye-rolling in its unsubtlety (but then, as an eight-year-old, I might have appreciated that) was not disagreeable to me.

I think I set my bar so high for this series from the first book that this book was inevitably a letdown. I loved the first book. I loved being introduced to all the characters, I loved learning about Daine's "wild magic" and her journey into self-discovery. Even the lengthy and confusing battle at the end didn't ruin it for me. This book, however, just dragged on. Daine is traveling with her mentor, looking for a missing group of Riders and re-encountering the pack of wolves with whom she bonded and which came to her assistance when she needed it before we were introduced to her in the first book. They were a crucial part in her development, and it was disappointing to me that they were so lacking in character.I found the plot boring and uninspired. Even if I didn't read the first few books in the series, I grew to like the characters from my introduction to them in the first book of the Immortals, and it was to my disappointment that they didn't make an appearance in this one. The mystery was boring, I didn't like the antagonists...before you say, well, no shit, Sherlock. They're supposed to be unlikeable. I mean that they were so...villainous, traditionally so. They were one-dimensional and boring. I also did not like the fact that Daine spends so much of her time interacting with animals. I like human interactions, I like it when Daine is out of her comfort zone. Animals are nice and good, but I'm not a furry. I'm really not into animals as characters. I prefer human interactions, and this book was lacking in that. I'm hoping book 3 will be better.

Okay, so this book was kinda like somebody threw a brick at my head or something. It just wasn't very . . . interesting? I don't know if it's because this is the first of Pierce's books where a million different plots weren't happening all at once, so she just had the one to concentrate on, or because it's the first of her books where the story is pretty much contained to a few characters, a relatively short span of time, and a fixed geographical location, but it was kind of draggy most of the time? I don't know. Like I said, I think I'm just used to the ZOOM ZOOM ZOOM of Pierce's plots, so when this book acted more like a normal book with a normal amount of plot and such, it kind of threw me. Anyway, no matter the cause, didn't find it as enjoyable as the Alanna books, or even the first book in the Immortals series.