ws the same strong storytelling ability of the first book. The language is still almost musical and wraps its sweet spell around you.... Storylines that were just starting to grow in the first book are also very well developed here. Intrigue and conflict are fleshed out and take some surprising twists. All that I had hoped for, reading the first book, begins to bloom...." --from a review by Kate Genet on the website, Kissed By Venus "Catherine Wilson creates a magical sense of place, and of belonging to that place. Within that, she also tells how it feels to not belong. ... Ms. Wilson's is a tale of bone wisdom. It whispers of what we remember when we sleep at night and dream. It calls us to remember that women had, and still have, a wise and powerful place in the world." --from a review on the blog, The Rainbow Reader, by Baxter Clare Trautman, author of The River Within "In this book we see Tamras' world open from the House of Merin and its immediate environs into the lands beyond its borders. She meets other peoples, whose ways are different from those she knows. Similarly Tamras' inner life expands as well: the feelings within her blossom into the romantic love that will be the linchpin her life will hinge on..." --from a review by Charles Ferguson on the Goodreads website In Book II of the trilogy, Tamras's apprenticeship as a warrior isn't turning out quite the way she expected. Her unconventional choices lead to her crossing swords, almost literally, with Vintel, the war leader of Merin's house. She finds herself embroiled in a power struggle she is doomed to lose, but the loss sends her on a journey that will change her destiny and decide the fate of her people.