This book started of storng and had me hooked on it. But as it progressed I found myself lose that excitement. I felt some parts drag. But all in all I still really enjoyed it. These Tamora Pierce books are fantastic. And Daja's a great character. ( )

Daja is my favorite character in the series and this book is exciting as the children travel away and I got to find put more about Daja's past. ( )

I really like Daja. Here we learn a lot more about Traders, and about Daja's attitude toward being outcast and the Traders' attitude toward her. The adventure - the crisis that forms the plot - is relatively minor; all the exciting bits (well, except the climax itself) are related to Daja and the Traders, especially the wirok. I really like her, too. ( )

Our great mages and their 4 apprentices are travelling with the Duke to assess the needs of the outer regions. Daja's, Briar's, Sandry's and Tris's magic has all bled together in very strange ways, causing Daja to have much longed for contact with other Trader folk. Forest fires are raging throughout the region, drought has lasted for 3 years, crops are failing and the copper mine is running dry. Things look very bad for the Gold Ridge Valley, but the 4 manage to put things almost back to rights with an amazing display of power and luck. ( )

I much prefer Pierce's Tortall books - I prefer nearly any given book in the Tortall universe to any book in the Circle universe. I think part of the problem I have with the Circle books is that there are always too many things going on at once, so none of them quite get the time they need to be developed, and neither do the characters. In Daja's Book, for instance, there is the drought, there is the fire (admittedly the two are connected), there is Daja's problems being a cast-out from her people (since a group of her people come around), there is yet another prideful mage (I think there is one in every book) and prideful noble (likewise) to cause problems and/or discord, and then Daja's and her friends' magics get away from them (more than once).

And that's not even all of it. It's just too much. The book should be half again as long to encompass it all, and all the Circle books are like that. But this is one of the two Circle books that I reread occasionally despite the problems, because certain parts of the storylines resonate with me. ( )