So, the second and third book of the Enchanted Forest series, Patricia Wrede’s Searching for Dragons and Calling on Dragons . Here we have the series problem again — everything I said about the first book is still true of these. They’re interesting, light fare that feel both genuinely YA yet somehow magically non-annoying, and they haven’t worn their welcome out in three books.
One joke has, though: A character in the book is a magic scholar, and talks about magic technically, using “big words.” This is always done for laughs, with the other characters continually failing to understand what he’s saying, and someone restating it in simpler language for the reader. Which is fine, except that the words aren’t big enough to feel actually obscure. The guy talks like somebody talking about, oh, computers. So a) every time the characters react with incomprehension, it jolts me, because I had no problem understanding it, and b) it makes me associate them with those willfully-ignorant “Oh, I don’t understand computers!” people who don’t even attempt to grasp explanations of moderately complex concepts. This is an artifact of the YA thing, obviously, but it’s only a mild irritant at this point.
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