This book is the kind you like to curl up with to read all in one day (maybe two). It’s cute in an eighties-movie way. Emma Bull incorporates themes of loyalty, friendship, and comments on the nature of humanity, but she manages to avoid the moralizing that was common in fantasy novels at the time she wrote War for the Oaks (i.e. Mercedes Lackey’s soapbox novels).

It’s not The Best Fantasy Ever, but it’s worth a read, and I’m horrified that I didn’t discover Ms. Bull’s work earlier.