Enna Burning by Shannon Hale (****)

This is the second book in the series that started with The Goose Girl. I loved the Goose Girl. I don't think that this one was quite as good as that one, but it was still really good. I listened to another full-cast audio on this one and that makes it very enjoyable, especially with the same voices for the characters. I am told there will be a third in the series, but it isn't out on audiobook yet.

In the first book, Anidori-Kiladra Talianna Isilee, Crown Princess of Kildenree is the heroine (quite a mouthful, pretty as it may be). Her friends called her Isi (pronounced "Izzy"). In this book, the heroine is Isi's friend Enna. The country of Bayern is at war and Enna's brother has learned how to burn--to draw heat into himself and send it out to create fire. But, he burns himself to death in the process. Now, Enna wants to learn, but at the same time, she is afraid of it. She wants to serve Bayern and she is high-spirited and wants to be in the thick of things. At the same time, Isi is struggling with her gift of wind-speaking. She feels constantly bombarded with the wind and is exhausted by it and very distracted. She longs to find some balance. And she and her newly-kinged husband long for an heir.

There was something about this book that made it not a juvenile book. I can't place my finger on what it was. There was an allusion to rape, though nothing happened and the word was not used. I think there was one bad word in it. But, there was just an element about it that made me think it was for an even older audience than Goose Girl, which was, to me, not a book for young children, either.

The thing that struck me most about the book was that is really had me sucked in. I was sitting at work after the book ended and I started to feel heat around me, touching my skin and I shuddered, shook myself, and forced myself to redirect my thoughts, lest I learn to burn too! Ha, ha.