Review Detail

Like all of the Agget-kin, Rinna (better known as Rin) is Forest born, but she has always had a connection to the trees that goes far beyond those of her older brothers, nieces, and nephews- she defines herself by it, and so when she grows older and the trees stop speaking to her she is crushed. When her favorite older brother Razo, a soldier in Bayern's Own, and his love interest, Dasha, come to visit, she convinces them to take her to the city (against their better judgement, for they doubt she will fit in there) where she becomes a waiting woman to Queen Anidori, better known as Isi. Even the scant number of trees in the city reject her, though, and she continues in her depression until Isi suggests that she might have been a tree- speaker once.

I read the first Book of Bayern, The Goose Girl, not long after it was published, and I fell so in love with Shannon Hale's style (she has a way of packing a lot of emotion into a scene without ever saying what the characters are thinking, which is a talent few YA authors bother to cultivate) that I read Enna Burning as soon as I could. Though I loved Enna even more than Isi, I did not realize that River Secrets had been published until almost a year after the fast, and I was determined not to make that mistake with Forest Born- I put it on hold as soon as the library got a copy. I'd love to be able to say that I read Forest Born in one sitting, but the truth is that it took me several days- I read slowly on purpose, for I enjoyed Rin's story and didn't want it to end.

Now that I am in the later portion of my teenage years, I feel the same way about Forest Born as some of my friends feel about Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising series- to read about Bayern is to return to a world that I loved when I was younger, though I doubt I will ever consider it juvenile or immature.