The Far West

The Far West by Patricia C. Wrede
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In the third book of the Frontier Magic series, Eff joins an exploratory expedition headed west to map uncharted wilderness and discover what is pushing the dangerous medusa lizards ever closer to the settlement lands. No one has ever gone quite so far and lived to tell about it--certainly not the ill-fated Lewis & Clark explorers many years ago. What they find threatens to destroy everyone and everything they know and love if they can't come up with a plan to prevent a massive magical cataclysm.

I love Patricia Wrede's books! Only 2 things keep me from giving this one a 5-star rating: 1) It's obvious from the start that Eff will go on the journey but it takes her a ridiculously long time to see that. 2) Marriage proposals without so much as holding hands or kissing or anything first?! Wrede does a great job with characterization and is a master of using a tiny phrase, gesture, or pause to speak volumes, and I'm not saying there should be some big romantic subplot, but it's just not believable even in the cultural environment of this story that anyone would leap from friendship to proposing marriage without so much as a kiss!

For readers' advisors: character, story, and setting doorways. Squeaky clean read. Written for teens but great for adults, too.

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