The story builds to a magical siege, and there are some basic but thoughtful issues about whether animals should be persuaded to assist in human conflict or discouraged.
(There were hints of the faults of David Eddings, too: I do not think that adult queens should ever giggle!) But Daine's perception of her wild magic is beautifully described, and the insertion of meditation into the regime of a mage was an interesting notion. Daine's repeatedly exressed surprise at the informality displayed by Tortallan nobility does make me sneakily wonder whether the author can actually do formal dialogue: easier to follow Terry Brooks and have all your folk talk as though they lived in the 20th-century. Pierce has deprived herself of a cracking novel by dealing with the preceding part of Daine's life (running wild with wolves) entirely in flashback but perhaps the different tone required would have stretched either the author's skill or (less likely) the reading skills of her target audience.The older characters are fairly enough drawn, if a little same-ish. It also clashes rather with her polite and well-groomed persona. When we find out what it is, it seems a little odd that she was so reluctant to tell her new friends, though she had curiously failed to spot that Numair the mage was a shape-shifter. (I was a little irritated by a heroine who must not only have a preternatural knack with animals but also be a phenomenal archer: one special power seems enough!) As the journey commences, there is more than enough of the domestic minutiae of camping to answer the charge that questing fantasy heroes never seem to go to the toilet or wash the dishes.Daine has a secret "bad thing" about which hints are dropped.
As the central character, a recently-orphaned teenager called Daine, encounters a woman horse-merchant, the scene is rather transparently set for a book designed to appeal especially to horse-loving girls. The setting is a comfortable mock-medieval world of small towns and feudal holdings, familiar to those who have read the preceding four-novel set (which I have not), and not markedly distinct from any other such fantasy world.
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