This wasn't one of those fantasy novels that really grabbed my attention, but I liked it well enough anyway. It's notable for two things. The first is an oracular pig, and I haven't seen a lot of them before! I like, too, that Hen Wen is essentially piggish. There's no anthropomorphism going on here: she's a special pig but she is a pig, and the one astounding bit of foresight that she shows happens off-page, which I think is great. Usually I'm not too excited about having the important bits happen off-page - why have a story that doesn't show them? - but it'd be hard to show a pig that's demonstrably oracular and still have it remain recognisably piggy... and I did find piggy little Hen Wen the most entertaining part of this book. The other aspect I really warmed to was that Taran, the assistant pig-keeper, was in his way a very ineffective sort of hero. And the book makes very clear, towards the end, that it was his continual failures and getting back up afterwards, refusing to give up, that made him ultimately successful. It's very easy to identify with a hero like that.