I've got stuck in this book and I don't know if I will continue with it. The problem is that I am still not clear what sort of a world the book is set in. It opens with a scene where a child sees a unicorn and the title tells you that there is magic here. But... The main character is in the "Wolves" - an elite guard; there are also also groups with animal names - this character is experiencing strange physical symptoms, leaving me wondering 'is he about to turn into a werewolf?' Is such a thing the norm in this world? I feel that I am floundering and consequently dont find myself engaged with the characters.

I'm disappointed as I so much enjoyed "A Feral Darkness" by this author. I might give it another go, but at the moment I am frustrated by the lack of context. ( )

This is a great book! It's an excellent portrayal of dealing with forces beyond one's control, in this case magic. Reandn, the main character, is very uncomfortable with magic and his reactions to to and actions thereof are brilliantly written. ( )

I won a copy of this from librarything, but apparently missed the window to pick it up! I'll try to get a copy to review when I can, so sorry about the delay!

Love this as always. Reandn (I cannot pronounce that in any way that makes Dan/Danny a reasonable nickname...wish I could hear how the author thinks it goes) is fascinating, even when he's tunnel-vision obsessed with his self-assigned quest. I didn't have any trouble with the names while reading, but now can't remember any names but his - about par for the course, for me. The teenager (ah, he's Tanager) is a pain in the butt - Reandn might have come to trust Farrell, the ex-wizard, sooner if Tanager hadn't messed things up repeatedly. Or perhaps not - see "obsessed". As always, I have to really stretch to see Reandn's point of view here - he's going up against a wizard who already beat him completely, but he doesn't want the assistance of another wizard (or at least, someone trained as a wizard). But then, Farrell keeps presenting it as "I want to know where this power came from", and only late in the book does he even mention that the bad guy's methods are unacceptable - of course, this is partly because he doesn't learn anything about said methods until late in the book, because Reandn doesn't trust him enough to explain. Very twisty motivations...it's a misunderstanding trope with nary a romance in view! And of course, Reandn's obsession is partly because of the pain that simply having magic near him costs him. He literally can't think straight in the presence of magic, so has a reduced chance of thinking straight about magic at all. Lots of braided cords of plot here. I like the unicorns' revenge - nice and nasty. Though I don't see why they couldn't repair Reandn as well - he took damage in that final fight, and had to heal more-or-less normally. This is probably my fifth or sixth reading of the book - read it first when it was new, and have reread it periodically since. But it's been more than a decade since my last reading - I need to make it less than that to my next one. ( )

I won a copy of this from a Librarything giveaway a while ago.
Sorry for the late review!

It was a little hard for me to get into the story at first.
But thankfully I stuck with it and after about halfway through, I couldn't put it down!
Thankfully I also snagged a copy of the second book, Wolf Justice, because I jumped straight into that one after this. ( )