Knowing what this character becomes later on makes her motivations and actions in this book so much sadder, but it was missing something that the earlier books had. Clariel had no personality and all she talked about was the Great Forest over and over again. Also nothing really happened except in the middle and towards the end. Nix's next book in the series seems like it will be 10x more interesting. ( )

While we were eager to spend more time in the world of the Abhorsen, and curious to know more about Clariel, knowing how she will eventually end up makes this book fairly dark from the get-go. Clariel tries so hard to escape various fates that seem to be laid out before her, but of course what she will eventually become is far darker than most of what she is running from.

Which made this book a bit of a tough hang for family story time. We all liked Clariel from the beginning, but the dark clouds are hanging low throughout. ( )

Audio book. My favourite one of the series so far. Please keep this series alive! ( )

A very good book! I have said it before but the world building that allows this to be "proper" fantasy with rigid roles for people while not being aggressively sexist and all "you're a woman, know your place" is so refreshing and good.

And I keep coming back to how good Nix is at writing characters that are pretty annoying and immature that you still want to keep reading about and want good things to happen to (even though reading this book you kinda knew it wouldn't happen).

Not often people manage to write a good sequel/prequel well after the first series, but it definitely happened here. Gives me hope for Goldenhand that I'm hoping will arrive in the mail soon ... ( )

Good, but definitely not up to par with the rest of the series. ( )