Owlflight, by Mercedes Lackey

  

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Bottom Line
Quite frankly, not one of her best.  I'll probably end up reading the rest of the series simply to finish it up, but as of right now I'd advise you to skip it.

Full Review
Chronologically, it follows the events in the Mage Storms series.  It's billed as a stand alone, but I think that without having read some of the other Valdemar books it would be a bit confusing.  The story is classic Lackey and follows a teenage protagonist on a journey of self discovery.  That's pretty much it in terms of plot - definitely not as much of a page turner as some of her earlier novels.

The first half of the book is spent in teenage misery, which tends to be reflected in long rants and whines by the main character.  It's a rather long set up for what happens in the rest of the book (and in the following two books) that could probably been cut to a rather short chapter or prologue.  Once Darian's village is burned and he's rescued by the Hawkbrothers things get a bit more interesting, although the whining continues.  All of which means that the readable parts of the book are rather slim, especially if you do like me and start flipping pages when Darian starts in on one of his self pitying inner monologues.

My guess is that she's simply running out of material for the Valdemar novels.  I think this is borne out by the fact that she hasn't written a Valdemar book in a while - the newest ones have focused on the Elemental Mages series as well as the rather fun Obsidian Trillogy with James Mallory.