Inda by Sherwood Smith

[meganbmoore]

Inda is the second son of the Prince of Choraed Elgaer. According to tradition, his older brother, Tanrid, is to train at the military academy, while Inda is to be trained at home, and become Tanrid’s champion when he inherits. By royal decree, however, second sons are now to attend the academy, too, and so off Inda goes, only to become the target

Comments

[meganbmoore]

I don't know that there are fewer so much as they're more organized! But I agree that you don't need to keep track of everyone to follow along. I learned that Inda's lead was a boy a while back, but it was still an adjustment.

[genarti]

I think that after a while, we stop having quite so many versions of names to keep track of. There are still a blue million characters, but at least the narration's mostly settled on one name for each. (Mostly.)

Inda was the first Sherwood Smith book I read -- wait, no, that's not true. I read the third Wren book first, but my feelings were lukewarm about it, which wasn't helped by the fact that I hadn't read the first two. But I absolutely adore the Inda series, and it has me really curious about her other work. It's all on the list! Unfortunately, my reading list is about a mile long...

[meganbmoore]

Well, fortunately for you, mostly of the others are shorter and fairly self-contained.

Hmm...I liked the Wren series quite a bit, but I agree in that i'm not sure I would have liked the third if I hadn't read the first two first, But then, I'm not big on reading out of order in general.

[genarti]

I'm not usually a fan of it either, but I found the third one very cheap at a used bookstore that didn't have any of the others, and said, "Why not? I've been meaning to read something of hers, anyway!"

One of these days I'll get around to getting the first two out of the library, and then giving the third another try.

I do also have Crown Duel, which I bought when I bought the third Inda book, but I have a bunch of other books to read first. My life is very hard, obviously.