Even better than the first book, Elliott's Spiritwalker trilogy has now taken on yet another trope of epic fantasy and retreated it. Not only do we have an epic fantasy heroine, we now have a visit to a foreign land wherein the natives aren't portrayed as culturally inferior to (Europe) the hero's home.
But a book isn't good simply because it refuses to make the genre's traditional mistakes. What I loved so much about this book was that it had the right amount of...perhaps "camp" is the wrong word, but let me explain. Epic fantasy is campy. It's a bit over the top, a bit ridiculous in the way that coincidences just keep coinciding, everyone is a bit more gaudy that people are. It's larger than life. And Elliott makes her characters embody that big-ness without ever losing control of them, the narrative or the reader's interest.
And, on that note, I am so glad to find a traditional epic fantasy that breaks with the problematic traditions of the genre and embraces what is good about it.