Two and a half stars, rounding up to three. It's an improvement on the last volume, certainly, and Jonathan is back to his normal self. The characterisation seems more consistent with the first two books in the series anyway. Irritatingly, there's yet another love interest thrown into the mix, this time a martial artist who, as characters in this series are wont to do, teaches Alanna fancy new skills and it's getting a bit eye-roll-worthy at this point. Granted, one of the strengths of Alanna's personality is that she tries new things and is always learning, but she does tend to run across expert tutors in fantastic abilities on the regular... and she picks up everything so quickly that she begins to feel like one of those video game characters who are close to maxing out on all abilities. On the whole I far preferred Pierce's Beka Cooper series, I think... the difficulty level just seems much harder there.