Review: Excellent YA fantasy novel
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 01 8, 2013
Good, solid YA fantasy novel about a young woman who lives with a band of "nomads" -- people who live in the forests and are expert trackers and hunters -- being brought into one of the city-states that formed after civilization collapsed. The cities are ruled by warring noble families who pretend to be civilized while plotting to kill one another, and Caylen teams up with the head of one of these families, Logan, in an effort to uncover who attacked her band of nomads and Logan, while he was traveling through the forest.The characters were well-drawn and the story well-constructed. My one issue with the novel is pacing. There were several times when it seemed a bit slow, especially near the beginning. It wasn't exactly that things weren't happening -- there was the initial attack and other life-threatening events -- but I think it felt slow to me because Logan was unconscious through much of it, and the interaction between Caylen and Logan is what drew me into the story. Things picked up when they reached the first town and Caylen and Logan interacted more. This really wasn't very far into the novel, so I didn't consider this enough of a problem to knock it down a star.I enjoyed the story immensely. This is book one of a series and I hope the author releases the next one soon!