Let's get down to business.
Enna Burning is the second book in the Books of Bayern series, and it focuses on Isi's best friend Enna, as you may have guessed. It's two years after the events of The Goose Girl, and Enna's back home in the Forest when her brother, Leifer, returns. Leifer seems jumpy and easily agitated now, which isn't like him. He's even talking about storming the castle and demanding the king's respect. Enna promptly shuts that down, prompting Leifer to try to set her on fire.
Yeah.
Enna travels back to the capital after that, hoping Isi might have some advice for her. However, it turns out that Isi isn't doing too well, either. Her wind speech is distracting and exhausting her to the point of uselessness, and no one knows how to stop it.
More pressing than Isi's problem, though, is the sudden invasion of Tira, the country to the southeast. They're attempting to take over Bayern lands that they claim once belonged to them, so now the countries are at war. This at least gives Leifer a new focus for his fiery fury - until he burns himself up on the battlefield.
Enna's grief drives her to read the vellum Leifer had that taught him how to work fire. She's hoping she'll be able to control it like her brother never could, and she wants to feel connected to him again. To keep her from burning up like Leifer did, Enna implements three rules: no burning big, no burning people, and no telling anyone, even Isi.
These rules work out okay for Enna at first, but then the war augury is held, and Enna accidentally interferes in order to save Finn's (and thus, Bayern's) life. She believes in the power of the augury, so now Enna believes that she must help the war effort by using her fire speech to burn supplies at the Tiran camps. In an attempt to keep herself under control, she enlists Razo's help - he's going on scouting missions anyway, so she sneaks along and burns random tents as a distraction. Finn ends up coming along once Razo realizes Enna's more out of control than she thinks.
Finally, Razo and Finn tell Enna she needs to stop burning, but the fire has her so caught up that she sneaks out one night to go burn the symbolic gallows the Tirans constructed in one of their camps. She manages to set it alight, but she also manages to get captured as a prisoner of war.
The only person she really interacts with after being captured is Sileph, a Tiran captain with a silver tongue. He slowly begins to convince Enna that she is powerful, beautiful, and totally capable of stopping the war with her burning - as long as she burns what he tells her to. Enna has no other option but to go along with him, though she does put up a fight whenever he tries to cross the line. She can't fight him too much, though - Razo and Finn also got captured, and Sileph says it's because they were trying to assassinate her.
Enna is falling in love with Sileph and his charm, but all that hits the wall when Isi sneaks into the Tiran camp disguised as a worker. She tells Enna a story that helps her realize Bayern still wants her, which gives Enna new plans to make an escape. Enna also overhears that Sileph has actually been giving the commands to keep her subdued and submissive to him, not this mysterious Captain Tiedan he's been talking about. Hurt and angry, Enna breaks free one night, taking Razo and Finn with her. The three of them travel to the battlefield, where the last great stand of the war is taking place. Enna burns for Bayern one last time, but she almost kills herself in the process.
This action makes Isi put her foot down. She's been reading about Yasid, a country where many people are supposedly able to speak to fire without facing the negative side effects that Enna has. They sneak off one night after claiming they're just going back to the Forest, a months-long journey that only gets more harrowing once Enna realizes Isi's pregnant and, oh, Sileph's found them again and wants revenge.
The girls (and Finn, making a surprise re-appearance) make it to Yasid, but the teachers there say they don't have the time to teach Enna water speech. Can Enna and Isi figure out a way to relieve them both of their nature-speaking burdens? Will Isi have the baby on the road? That's for you to find out, potential reader.
You know how some series have a sophomore slump at the second book? Enna Burning isn't one of those novels. The characters are thrown into completely different situations from the first book, but they remain as captivating and well-written as ever. Enna, Razo, Finn, and Isi all develop as people, but their choices are never inconsistent with what they might have done in The Goose Girl.
I also really like how Sileph's treatment of Enna was handled. He deliberately abuses her in order to get her to conform to his wishes, and she doesn't just shake that off like it was nothing. It's more apparent in book three, River Secrets, but Enna definitely has some trust issues after that, which adds a very real theme to such a magic-based book series.
Going off of that, I love the way the nature speaking works, too. In so many stories, people can shape wind or fire or what-have-you with no negative consequences except maybe temporary exhaustion, but Hale chose to take that a step further in the Books of Bayern and make it necessary for people to balance their magics simply in order to stay sane. While I can't say I think it wouldn't be cool to know fire speech, I appreciate how this story reminds the reader that "all magic comes with a price," to quote Rumpelstiltskin.
The last thing I want to talk about is Enna and Isi's friendship. (And maybe how Razo and Finn come in to that, too.) While this book has its romantic subplots, a major portion of it is also about true friendships and how they affect people. Both Enna and Isi would have suffered greatly (like, more than they already did) if the other girl hadn't been around to take care of her and push her forward. Razo and Finn also obviously care about Enna and Isi, nicely disproving the "boys and girls can't be friends!" adage. All of these people would have been totally screwed without each other, and I love how their platonic relationships aren't coded as "lesser" just because they don't like to kiss each other, too. Enna and Isi's relationship might even be closer than Isi and Geric's in some respects!
Basically, if you like realistic magic, fairy tales, and stories about friendship, you need to read Enna Burning, like, yesterday. Five stars.
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