To be honest, it's a good book. I had to take a star off just because it's not my cup of tea, all this woman warrior fantasy kind of stuff. But I do agree with other reviewers that lots of girls could benefit from reading it - girls who are about to get pressured to be boy-crazy, and to neglect their own development of their own strengths.

I do have to warn you of a slow start. Even though it's short, and for tweens, I almost put it down until I started to get deeper into it, about 1/4 of the way through. ( )

Not a bad first book. Definitely a young-adult kind of novel, in that the main character development is the heroine's increasing awareness of moral complexity. The world seems interesting - I particularly liked the semi-aware trees. It could still use some further development, though. The geography remained unclear, as did the reasons for the conflict between Beechians and Trantians. ( )