While I loved the author as a teen due to her influx of female heroines in the male-dominated fantasy adventure genre, I have grown out of this series due to the types of relationships the author encourages in teenage girls, which played a part in my unrealistic expectations regarding romance and my underperformance at school.

Numair and Daine have implied mutual attraction throughout the series, culminating in an established relationship by the final book when Daine is conveniently legal (where I live) at sixteen but still too young to be snogging her thirty-year-old teacher, who doesn't, to my mind, have nearly enough guilt about allowing it. This is not the kind of relationship impressionable teens should be encouraged to pursue.

Other than that, Daine is a model of survival, perseverance and self-improvement.

This might have been a favorite series, if only I had read it as a kid. Daine’s animal friends are absolutely delightful, and it has a fun progression as she hangs out with them and learns new powers. Partially due to my current mood, the audiobook, and the reading level it was written for, it ended up feeling a bit shallow to me. 

As the second book in a quartet, this doesn’t wrap up anything from a previous book, but it spends time with the wolf pack Daine mentioned in WILD MAGIC. There’s a new storyline which is a combination of spying and a “save the forest” style mission. The Pack summoned Daine because the local two-leggers are destroying natural resources and making the land uninhabitable with their new mining and logging projects. When Daine and Numair arrive, they discover that there are a lot of potentially hostile mages who have no reason to be there. The rest of the plot focuses on Daine’s increasing connections with the local wildlife, and her growing mastery of her magic. Numair leaves to get help, leaving Daine to figure out things without his aid for long stretches. 

The entire plot with finding out the problem and saving the valley is introduced and resolved within this book. It introduces a bunch of characters and factions who may be important in later books, but this story is very well-contained. It doesn't specifically leave anything for later, but it establishes new situations for most of the characters who were established in this book. I know from the sequels that certain details and characters do or don't matter for later books, but the story itself doesn't really give hints. The two major exceptions to this are that Daine has been trying to find out who her Da is since the first book so eventually she'll probably get an answer, and that Emperor Ozorne has been mentioned a lot and will likely be important. Anything else might or might not matter later. Daine feels a bit older than the last book. Clearly not an adult yet, she's now fourteen and a half (an age where half years are important) rather than the perhaps thirteen of the first book. 

This story is so self-contained, with backstory succinctly conveyed when necessary, that it could make sense when read on its own. It could make even more since to anyone who has read any of the other Tortall books, even if not WILD MAGIC. It only barely features previously known characters, due to the event which effectively traps Daine in the valley almost as soon as they arrive. 

I like this one generally, and it introduces several characters who will be more important later. It also features an expansion of Daine's powers in a major way. Not bad, but I remember liking the later books more (we'll see if they hold up on re-read). 

Probably my least favorite book of the series, but I still really enjoy it!