The students at my school love this book. The spirit animals reminded me of the daemons in Philip Pullman's Dark Materials series. It also has Harry Potterish elements: the children are searching for talismen (horcrux), an evil leader, the Devourer, is back (Voldemort). There is a lot of action including blood and violence; both animal and human. I did find some of the vocabulary to be a bit advanced for the students who are reading it. The characters' names are non-traditional, but appear to follow our phonetic rules and are easy to sound out. This first book sets up the series and it takes a while to get to know all of the characters, their spirit animals, and to figure out who is good and who is evil. Scholastic provides a companion website where readers can chose their own spirit animal, play games, and explore the world of Erdas.
