Amazon.com (ISBN 0590459538, Hardcover)

Prolific children's book author Bruce Coville has delivered a down-to-earth unicorn tale, if such a thing is possible. Song of the Wanderer, the second book in The Unicorn Chronicles, delivers a neat follow-up to Into the Land of the Unicorns, unraveling mysteries and handily reweaving new ones just as fast. The world of the unicorns, Luster, is carefully and cohesively imagined, with myths and rules and prejudices that seem logical and organic. Readers will thrill to the story of Cara, an earth girl who becomes both ward and savior of the unicorns. She must travel through Luster--a world replete with all manner of secret caves and rainbow prisons and talking seashells--back to earth to try to find her grandmother, the Wanderer. The episodic structure of the book is satisfying; Coville delivers all the de rigueur scenes, including a makeover, wherein a Geomancer provides Cara with clothing appropriate to her journey: "To finish the outfit, she strapped a short sword to Cara's side. 'May you never have to use it,' whispered the Geomancer." (The rest of us hope otherwise.) Coville hurries his heroine past some flat characterizations through clever, well-thought-out plot points. And he leaves his ending compellingly open, as befits a series: Luster resounds with rumors of "the possibility of a fierce, final battle that would decide the ancient struggle between the unicorns and the Hunters once and for all." Stay tuned, unicorn lovers. --Claire Dederer