Book #82 of 2017:
Wolf-Speaker by Tamora Pierce (The Immortals #2)
An okay follow-up to Tamora Pierce’s earlier novel Wild Magic. I liked that Pierce went out of her way to emphasize that not all creatures who look like monsters are evil, but this was kind of a weird message in a novel where the human villains lack any kind of shading to their characters – they’re rude to Daine, they’re destroying animal habitats with their industry, and they’re plotting a rebellion against the king (for no deeper reason than that they want to be on the throne instead). I also wasn’t thrilled with the expansion of Daine’s magic, which apparently lets her instantly befriend any animal, enter into its mind to control its body, AND shapeshift her own body to resemble it. Hopefully the further books in this series do something to scale that back, because in this adventure she’s simply too overpowered for anything to ever seem like a credible obstacle.
★★☆☆☆
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