This is a truly excellent coming-of-age/finding-self story.

Paski Archuleta's world goes topsy-turvy when her dad returns to Taos from a trip to LA looking, acting, and behaving like a person gone insane. He's dressing like an idiot, he's acting like an idiot, and to top it all off, he tells her they're moving to LA. Like, immediately.

Paski loves her life in Taos. New Mexico is the only home she's ever known. Her friends are here. Her mountains are here. Not that she has much choice.

The U-haul gets loaded, Paski makes the rounds to say goodbye to her best friends and to Ethan, and off they go.

Her first impressions of California are mixed. On the one hand, there's a lot more nature to Southern California than she was expecting. On the other, everything seems inordinately huge, and everyone drives nice, expensive cars way too fast.

Her first order of business is to ride over to her new school and check it out. Once there, she can't help herself, and shows off her mountain biking skills by going straight down a hill to get to the school yard. This earns her the attention of Chris Cabrera, who takes an immediate liking to her. A feeling which happens to be oh so very mutual.

The Chris Cabrera story line is one of my favorites, as it reminded me a lot of when I met my "one."

Chris is, however, taken by the school's richest, meanest girl. At least, according to Jessica he is. And not only is she the most popular girl--Paski has heard of her, in a roundabout way. Maybe not that she's the National Motocross Champion. But the line of clothes her mom made? Paski's heard of JessWear.

Things go from bad to worse, as her father trades in their Corolla for a huge boat of a car he plans to turn into the Squeegee Mobile, after the character he's come to LA to make into a movie. Now not only is she an apartment girl, she has a vehicle she absolutely can not be seen in.

Her first party goes wrong in about 5 minutes. First with the forced kissing of a girl she doesn't know, then with the drugged drink which turns into a but of a murder attempt as Jessica pushes her into the pool and she finds herself unable to get out. Luckily, Chris dives in to save her, and though her head and face are a bit of a mess, she'll be fine.

Just about her only solace is her bike. And after her first friend, Tina, points out the path near the school, Paski is back in riding heaven. This trail rocks.

She also joins the school paper, an activity she was part of back at home. Much to her chagrin, her first assignment is to cover Jessica's upcoming race. A fact exacerbated by the vision she's been having ever since she first saw Jessica. A vision of her broken and crumpled under her motorbike.

This is definitely a book with a lot of tension and suspense--I think I was actually holding my breath in parts, which isn't so good for an asthmatic with allergies. But I suppose it's good for the author.

Despite all the drama, danger, and insanity of her new life in Aliso Viejo, Paski manages to navigate through and come out on top. It's definitely an incredible ride.

Gavril, a poor love-struck artist, is visited one night by a dream of a murdered man. He learns that he is the estranged son of a lord of a distant land, and that his father was the man murdered in his dreams. He has, however, inherited far more than a castle and an icy realm, for the secret to his family's long reign is a baleful spirit that offers unimaginable destructive powers, but at a ghastly price...

The problem with this book is the pace. There's so many events crammed in that everything is rushed, and we jump from place to place, milestone to milestone, viewpoint to viewpoint, without any thoughtful pause for significant events. Travel seemed entirely too quick -- taking a couple of days to get from a sunny, tropical climate to an icy taiga doesn't seem feasible in an age of horse-drawn carriages. Abilities that supposedly take years to learn are mastered overnight. Profound relationships are formed between people who exchange scarcely a few sentences. Any other author, with this much material, would have written 3 books instead of 1.

With so much happening, and with the viewpoint switching between at least half a dozen people, it was impossible to get attached to any of the (many) characters. They were all distinct, had clear motivations and salient characteristics, but I never felt like I actually got to know them, so I never cared about them. They needed more time to develop, to interact, to reveal themselves and stamp themselves as individuals, not custom-made cogs inserted into the plot machine.

Some characters were rather perplexing, like the Emperor and his daughter. The Emperor's desperate affection for his young ward seemed misplaced, at odds with the rest of his personality (it would have made more sense if it had been romantic or sexual, instead of paternal). And I can't make heads or tails out of Karila, his daughter, which I cannot discuss due to spoilers -- suffice to say, she is presented as an ordinary child but has puzzling, mysterious characteristics that I wish had been explained, or at least remarked upon. I suppose that has been left to the sequels.

Another objection I have is that dire consequences were held over character's heads but never actually brought down -- for example, staying out for hours in a freezing blizzard without appropriate clothing, and yet not getting frostbite.

Despite all this, I rate the book highly because it is so competently written. Aside from a few gaffes like "fruitily alcoholic", the author's prose was clear, brisk, and full of detail, if a bit stiff. I liked the unusual setting inspired by Russia and featuring 18th century technology, like gunpowder and alchemy. It's nice to see a fantasy that isn't stuck in the Dark Ages. I was pleased by the presence of ghosts, and intrigued by the role of the guslyars. The Drakhaoul himself is an interesting idea. Several of the plot twists surprised even me, something that does not happen often.

This book contains no references to sex, but it does contain violence, descriptions of charred corpses and such. While it would be scary for children, I doubt any parent could object to their teenagers reading it.