Forest Born by Shannon Hale
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Forest Born is #4 in The Books of Bayern. This story follows Razo’s little sister, Rin, who possesses a gift that really scares her. It makes her feel like she doesn’t belong, so when Razo and Dasha invite her to go work at the palace to work as a lady’s maid for Isi, she take the opportunity. But mysterious fire attacks start happening along the Bayern border so Isi, Enna, and Dasha go to investigate, and Rin follows them. It turns out the problem is not at all what they thought and things fall apart very quickly in a very awful way.
This is a story about finding yourself and embracing who you are. There’s also a lot of girl power, which is awesome. My favorite thing about this book was having all of the characters from previous books back again. I loved seeing all these awesome characters interact with each other (because they’re hilarious), and I loved seeing them work together and fight together. The girls carry most of the story, but there was a fair amount of Razo and Geric, which made me happy.
I didn’t enjoy this one quite as much as River Secrets, or The Goose Girl, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a good book. It was a lot like Enna Burning in that there just wasn’t a lot of happiness, and there was a really strong focus on her struggle, so it’s kind of dark. Not that that’s a bad thing. There has to be adversity and darkness for a story to go anywhere. I just like books that have a little more balance, and this one felt like it had more drpression it did happiness.
I would recommend this book to anyone who read and liked the other Books of Bayern. They are all wonderful, and Forest Born was a nice wrap-up of the series. 🙂