On a quest to escort the orphaned New Formorians (children born with wings) back to the land of their ancestors, Brighid, a centaur huntress, discovers a complication she hadn’t anticipated: her quest companion, the warrior Cuchulainn, needs her help as well. Still grieving from the death of his love, it’s begun to threaten his soul.

I enjoyed this series’ first book, Elphame’s Choice, reasonably well, so I thought I’d give this one a try. Unfortunately, it’s too predictable and not especially satisfying. I think I’m through with P.C. Cast. ( )

This is a later book in a series. This review may contain spoilers for earlier books.

At the end of Elphame's Choice, the New Fomorians were free from the curse of madness, and Elphame's brother, Cuchulainn, was leaving to lead them back to Partholon, the home of their mothers and grandmothers. As this book begins, Brigid, Clan MacCallan's Huntress, sets off after him to assist in leading them home. When she joins Cu and the New Fomorians, she discovers that she will need to learn how to use the Shaman powers that she inherited from her mother, but until now has used only for tracking game.

This is a much more satisfying book than Elphame's Quest. The first book in this series had a love story, and one other plot: the undoing of the curse on the New Fomorians. The second has a love story (and a more mature one at that- the characters actually know each other and come to know each other better, as opposed to just showing up and realizing they are destined to be soulmates), the plot about leading the New Fomorians home, a plot about repairing Cu's wounded soul, a plot about Brighid fully realizing her Shaman powers, and a plot about the Centaur Plains being on the brink of war.

Unfortunately, Brighid's Quest is more of a second book in a trilogy than Elphame's Choice was the first book in a trilogy. As EC ended, the story could have been over. The readers would have assumed that Cu brought the New Fomorians home, that he grieved for Brenna for a while but eventually got back to the business of living as people tend to do, and that everybody lived as happily ever after as people ever live. At the end of BQ, the big evil things for the third book are already on the loose. This is probably typical, in that authors often write a first book that is self-contained because publishers may not want to commit to a series until they have seen the sales, but when the second book is written the third one has already been agreed upon. Unfortunately, as of my latest reading of the author's web site and blog (Oct 14 2007), it's unknown when or by whom Ciara's Destiny, the third book, will be published. I don't think that the ending of BQ makes the book significantly less satisfying, however. It's just too bad that strings are left to be tied when there's no guarantee that we will get the third book. ( )