To her credit, Vande Velde does not dodge the obvious questions that arise out of the situations she creates. When the dragon Selendrile takes human form, he is naked—no clothes miraculously appear without explanation; further, being after all a dragon most of the time, he finds Alys's embarrassment at his nudity odd and even funny: "'Humans,' he sighed in a tone which reminded Alys that—whatever was the dragon equivalent to seventeen years old—dragons lived for hundreds of years. 'Sometimes I forget.'" He finds himself some clothes which Alys must care for when he takes the forms of other creatures.

Alys's desire for revenge might be unsettling to some readers, but her anger is very well motivated. The ending in which she forsakes revenge seems designed to suit those readers.

In any case, the principal interests of the story...