Tildi lives a simple life on the farm with her brothers in the land of the smallfolk. But when her brothers are all killed by monsters, the council says that a woman cannot manage a farm by herself, and they say they will force Tildi to get married. So she runs away and travels out into the world of the humans, centaurs, and elves. Before her brother died, he had applied to become an apprentice to a famous wizard, so Tildi dresses up like a boy and takes the letter of apprentice as her own. But first, she has to get to the city where the wizard lives.

I loved the first part of this book where Tildi is running away and then when she is studying with the wizard, but as soon as Tildi goes on a quest with a whole troupe of other characters, the focus shifted a lot more to those other characters, and I lost interest. I wanted more of Tildi and the wizard, but there were a lot of tangents and chapters from other characters' points of view. I ended up skimming some of the other chapters that didn't include Tildi.

The writing is really fun and whimsical, but there is also a lot of violence right at the beginning when Tildi's brothers are killed. It has a good balance of serious themes and light-hearted scenes throughout the book.

The magical setting has all this weight of history behind it. You get the feeling that Tildi is just a very small little blip in all the history of the other characters, because she is so very young compared to the wizards and elves and dwarves who might live for centuries or even longer.

This book ends on a cliffhanger, so I immediately bought the second book so that I could find out what happens to Tildi on her quest!