What's Elizabeth Reading? ...Hilari Bell

My YA Lit. professor has assigned everyone to read at least three young adult books and write an essay comparing one archetypal aspect of them.  With all the world of YA literature to choose from, I thought back to Tamora Pierce, who was and is one of my favorite YA writers.  I decided that at least one of the books I chose had to be written by her.  Then I went online and looked up authors who are similar, and got Robin McKinley (her book Beauty is my all-time favorite Beauty and the Beast retelling, by the way) and Hilari Bell.

Before this, I'd never heard of Hilari Bell.  Apparently she's pretty good, though, so I'm going to give her a try.  I walked to the city library and checked out Fall of a Kingdom, which is the first book in her Farsala Trilogy.  I read a little during my walk home, and the book had me smiling by page two.  Also, it has a map in front.  I have a friend who has said before that if a book has a map in the front, it is always bound to be good.

I have high hopes for this book.  If it's good enough, I may even decide to read the entire trilogy, on top of all my other reading homework.  It's possible.