This was a baby step better than the first two…a step more mature, more complex, with better writing, plot, and characters that engage the reader. The two main characters lace in and over one another, missing each other at every junction—even though they are beside one another, holding each other the whole way… and this play back and forth builds tension and anticipation and just when you think a sigh of resolved relief is around the next tree or through the next river of magical waters… a wisp of something that might have been tangible disappears. Again. And in the recapturing of what’s been lost in between there is <i>quite</i> a bit of repetition. 

Battles happen. Lives are lost. Growth takes place in everyone; we get the story from the perspective of Reid and Lou, but enough of Bo and Coco and Ansel are present, and they are developed complex sidekicks now, all having grown and matured since that first book…

Aw heck, it were fun tho wernit?