Joanne has barely had time to process what happened in
Ireland when she receives news her father is missing. She quickly returns to
North Carolina, to a place she hasn’t been since a child, to discover not only
is her father missing, but so is the man who fathered her child.
He Master is there, seeking to tap into the devastating
pain and loss suffered by the Native Americans to power evil beyond imagining;
unless they can stop it.
But also there are the people Joanne long left behind,
not all of whom are that willing to welcome her back, even if she has finally
embraced her legacy of a shaman. There’s also Aida, the son she gave up at
birth and a powerful shaman in his own right – and a source of both emotional
and mystical turmoil.
Joanne has, in many ways, completely her journey of
development in this book and
the last book. Last book she confronted so many of the issues she had with
her mother – and this book she does the same with her father and with Aidan, the
son she gave up for adoption. It’s not easy, there’s some heavy emotional
content there, but it’s handled in a very reasonable and mature level – no dramatic
angst, not seething rage, no losing their sense of priorities or avoiding the
actual plot and disaster they are facing. It also reflects Joanne’s personal
growth – she has finally decided to put away her desire for an instruction
manual – because she has been doing this for some time now and she’s been
managing and achieving great things. Joanne acknowledges her own skill – her own
mastery. When her dad does things differently, she accepts that they do things
differently, not better or worse. When she does something her dad says is
impossible, she doesn’t think she’s doing something wrong, she just knows she
does something different from her dad.
Joanne has reached an excellent point where she is
willing to learn from others, but not feel inferior for it and not feel like
she has to do anything their way – while still being confident in her skills
and her achievements and finally settling on the idea that she is strong, she
can do things others cannot and there’s no problem with her doing just that.
Even if it is unwise at times. It’s a wonderful development after books of
denial, books of panic, books of her messing things up epicly through ignorance
and confusion and now her finally reaching the end of that path. I love her
growth
Not just with magic – but relationships as well,
recognising her old problems, her old grudges, when she was often unfair or
unthinking or how her perception was skewed. Through a more mature, wiser eye,
Joanne looks back at herself and her old home and a fair whack of complex
feelings about it
