Tamora Pierce is a lover of strong female role models and most of her books are aimed towards young women ages 8 - 16. This series is a perfectly wholesome series, age recommendation is a loose thing. If you have a junior younger than 8 who churns through books, then by all means get them to read some of Pierces work. Though there are plenty of fighting scenes and wars so it may also appeal to young men out there too. So Steemians! If you enjoy some light reading or have some young adults and would like to give some wholesome reading, this is for you.

Realms of the Gods

This book is based approximately 3-6 months after the previous book 'The Emperor Mage'. On Winter Solstice the barrier between human and divine realms having been cut and split and opened at so many various points, it's power stretched too thin, finally shatters. Immortals are now free to come and go from the mortal and divine realms at a whim.

Numair and Daine are called upon to face a new foe called Skinners. Shooting them, exploding them, burning them and burying them does nothing. Daines Wild Magic just gets eaten by them. Daine and Numair are quickly out numbered, thankfully on solstices and equinoxes, lesse gods are able to travel between the realms completely and Daines parents pull her and Numair into the Divine Realms.

You heard right. Daine's parents. Daine had gotten an inkling that her father might be Weiryn, god of the hunt, but now she finally has it confirmed. Also her mother, rescued from the Realms of the dead by Weiryn, petitioned to become a minor goddess of herbs, gardens, healing and midwifery in the northern hills and mountains.

Now Daine is thrilled to see her mum again but as it turns out, they now cannot be returned to the mortal realm by her parents till Autumn equinox. Meanwhile in the mortal realm there is a war building where Daine and Numair are needed, not to mention Skysong is back there waiting for them. They send a plea to the greater gods to send them back as they have the power to do so, but the great gods are busy and cannot spare a moment to transport the mortals back.

So it's determined then that they must travel to the Dragonlands for only the great gods and dragons have the power to transport mortals from one realm to the next outside of solstices and equinoxes.

This is the story of Daine and Numaires adventures through the Divine Realms and how the wars of gods effect the mortal realms.

Thoughts

There's never a dull moment in this book. There's spies and intrigue and magic abound. Here's also (finally) some romance in this book. To be fair though if there was romance before this book it would have been creepy since the first book starts with Daine at the age of 13. She is now 16 in this book.

Meeting the dragons is like a mix of walking into feisty retirement village mixed with a highschool. Leaf is adorable and as an Aussie I love the fact that they've put Broadfoot the "Duckmole" in.
The writing style is sweet and simple and easy reading. This whole quartet I actually finished by this past weekend and it's just taken me forever to get my butt into gear and actually write these reviews.

Finale

For young adults I give it 8/10. For adults I give it a 7.5/10. Pierce has a knack of pulling everything together at the end nicely so that though you want to know more, you're still sated and happy at how it all came together and turned out.

If your interested in my reviews of the previous books in this Quartet:
Book 1: Wild Magic
Book 2: Wolf Speaker
Book 3: The Emperor Mage

The next book I'll be reading is Pierces newest book 'Tempests and Slaughter' which is the learning years of Arram Draper, later known as none other than Numair Salmalín.