In the land of the Seven Kingdoms, some babies are born with eyes that are both the same color, but by the time they are toddlers, their eyes change to be two different colors, such as blue and green or silver and gold. If so, they are said to have a ‘Grace,’ to be possessed of some sort of gift. It may be as innocuous as being able to make the best bread ever–in which case they will probably go work for the kitchens in the royal castle–or it may be like Katsa’s: killing. Katsa is the niece of one of the kings of the Seven Kingdoms, and she has been used as an assassin many times over the years. This is the story of Katsa coming to terms with, well, being gifted at killing.

Well. Sort of. It’s also about politics and it’s a love story and a tale of survival and rescue and all sorts of other things. But at its heart, it’s Katsa’s coming-of-age story.

The politics are because, well, there are seven kingdoms and of course there are going to be power struggles, especially when there’s a particularly evil king sitting on one of the thrones with a particularly evil Grace. The love story is between Katsa and Po, who is Graced with fighting (maybe), and who is the youngest son of another king. He’s a suitable mate for her–not just politically but by temperament and Grace–but Katsa isn’t particularly interested for various reasons. At least, not at first. The survival and rescue, well, I’m not going to tell you about that because it would give away more of the plot than I’m willing to do.

Katsa is a strong, multi-faceted character; readers looking for strong, multi-faceted female characters will not be disappointed. Readers who enjoy richly-described fantasy worlds with interesting geography and a strange new form of magic will definitely be interested in this story. The male characters are pretty interesting, as well; not just Po but the other people in Katsa’s household, especially Prince Raffin. The pacing of the plot is fairly good as well, although the adventure part of the story stretched on a bit longer than I wanted. Readers more invested in the action than the romance will probably be happy, though.

The problem I had with Graceling is that I felt that the interpersonal conflict was pretty much all manufactured by the heroine herself and I have very little patience for, well, that. Essentially to me it felt like Katsa was saying, “Oh, woe is me! For I am a freak and shall never, ever find a man who will accept me as I am, the kind of woman who doesn’t really like to wear skirts and likes to kill things! All men want to change me and make me into the kind of woman who has to stay home and not kill things!” And standing right next to her was Po, saying also the entire time, “Um, hi. I’m Po. Right here. Hey. Standing here. Oh, what the hell–you’ll come around someday.” Now, I’m a fan of self-discovery and not necessarily falling madly in love with the first guy to come by who seems not to be the world’s biggest jerk, but I think I would have preferred the story where she realized that he appeared to be the kind of man who wouldn’t expect her to change but was still suspicious and wanted to hold out judgment, rather than flat-out denying to herself that that man could even exist.

Then again, I’m twenty-eight and Katsa is eighteen, and perhaps I’m expecting her to act more like me. But I spent half the book mad at her because of this–and she seemed to be pretty decent at all other times–so I’d like to note it here. Younger readers, or those who are better at accepting characters at face value, will probably not notice it, or be less annoyed.

Honestly, this was a good read, and an excellent addition to the oeuvre, and it’s possible I’ve just got the strangest set of biases on the planet. I’d recommend it to pretty much anyone who’s interested in the genre, frankly; it’s got a little bit of everything and it does it all awfully well. 4/5 stars.

Nick and Alan are brothers and have been on the run from a coven of evil magicians (all magicians are evil; they feed people to demons) for a very long time now. When a classmate of Nick’s (named Jamie) gets into some possibly supernatural trouble, his sister Mae asks around and finds out that Nick and Alan are the ones to talk to. Unfortunately, of course, Nick and Alan have problems of their own; the coven is about to find them. Unfortunately, Jamie and Mae end up caught up in their drama. Just why are these magicians after Nick and Alan? And why does it seem like Alan is hiding things from his brother?

The Demon’s Lexicon is a fast-moving, exciting story; our main quartet of characters are being hunted by scary and/or unknown people for nearly the entire course of the story. There’s violence, with cars and guns and a possessed unkindness of ravens; there’s magic flying around all over the place, including a Goblin Market (no actual goblins, as far as I could tell), demon-raising via dancing, and magical pendants; and there’s a bit of romance, or perhaps just physical attraction. While most of the main characters are male, the female characters who appear are strong and feisty, but not in a stereotypical sort of way, and I especially enjoyed Mae’s “Romeo and Juliet Wouldn’t Have Lasted” t-shirt.

What I liked the most about this story was the twist. Yes. There’s a twist. I’m not going to give it away, but I have to say that it’s one of the best twists I’ve read in a while. Most of the books I’ve read recently with Big Surprise Twists at the end have either had really silly, really insulting, or really ‘where did that come from?’ twists. Obviously not everyone agrees with me, especially on Evernight, but if there’s going to be a Big Surprise Twist at the end, I don’t want one that makes me slap my forehead and say, “That was it?!” I’d like one that respects my intelligence and makes me laugh with delight, even if it’s sort of a big change to the whole world and possibly moves a book into darker territory than it had been in before. Ms. Brennan’s twist was a good one.

The characters and their interactions were another draw of the volume. Jamie’s nervous banter and Mae’s responses were priceless, and Alan’s and Nick’s combination of trying to protect the other were also quite interesting to watch. Alan has a crush on Mae, just to complicate things, but Mae is a bit more attracted to Nick than Alan (Nick has that bad-boy air, while Alan seems more like an intellectual). Jamie, of course, watches the whole triangle from the outside, and seems to find it a bit amusing. There are a few other characters — a dancer named Sin, for one — who fill in the edges, and I am looking forward to reading more about all of them in the next volume. My only complaint is that it’s too long until then. 4.5/5 stars.

Georgia O’Grady, a twenty-first-century fifteen-year-old English schoolgirl, is more likely to be mistaken for an English schoolboy, with her short, spiky hair, indifferent manner of dressing, and pre-adolescent figure. She’s also horse-mad, and when she finds a winged horse figurine in an antiques store, she saves up for and buys it. Of course, it turns out to be a Stravagating talisman, and she falls asleep and finds herself in Talia. She ends up in a stable in Remora, an analogue for Siena, and they mistake her for a boy, renaming her Giorgio Gredi. There, she finds herself swept up in the annual horse race, to be held shortly. Of course, though, because she is a Stravagante and this is Talia, there’s more going on than just a simple horse race . . .

Georgia doesn’t have the most pleasant life. Her stepbrother, Russell, makes her life very difficult, and although her stepfather isn’t actually a bad person, he and Georgia’s mother don’t really believe the extent of Russell’s abuse. At school, her life isn’t much better; she’s not one of the pretty, popular girls, and doesn’t have many friends. Her main afterhours pursuit — horseback riding — is generally a solitary affair (until she meets Alice, who is also horse-mad), and she’s not particularly interested in having a boyfriend just for the social cachet. However, in Talia (Remora), she has friends (Lucien, from the previous book, with whom she went to school, appears), she has horses, and she is, as a matter of fact, significantly happier.

While the horse-racing is the main point of the book, there’s a secondary plot with a young member of the Di Chimici family, Falco, who was injured in a riding accident some years back. Due to the limits of sixteenth-century medicine, he is now unable to walk unaided and has no chance of ever riding a horse again. Between him and his next-older brother, Gaetano, we are shown a softer, more human side of the Di Chimici family. Clearly, of course, they are still the nemesis in the book, but things become a lot more complicated when we see that they are not nearly so different from the Duchessa and her family as might have been believed.

This book also has hard choices and deaths; it isn’t exactly a sequel, as shown by my un-cut description, but it definitely seems to be tied firmly to the previous volume. I don’t think much of this book would make sense — especially the stravagating (traveling from 21st-century England to 16th-century Talia) — without what we learned in the previous volume. Somehow the travel seems less hokey the second time around, and the story is longer and richer, with a grander cast of characters and more questions about one’s role in life. I am still definitely looking forward to the next books in the series. 4/5 stars.

Lucy Scarborough is a normal twenty-first-century girl, living in Massachusetts. Well, a normal girl with a crazy mother who is a bag lady in town, but she’s got a wonderful set of foster parents, Soledad and Leo Markowitz, some good friends, and a date to the junior/senior prom coming up shortly. Until an unfortunate event occurs at the prom, she turns up pregnant, and she finds her mother’s diary. In the diary, she finds out that all of the women in her family, as far back as anyone can remember, are under a curse; they all become pregnant at seventeen and when they give birth at eighteen, if they haven’t completed three impossible tasks (as detailed in a variant of “Scarborough Faire”), they go crazy. Fortunately, she has help, but not much time. Can she accomplish these things and stay sane?

Apparently Ms. Werlin realized at some point that the so-called ‘impossible’ tasks in the ballad “Scarborough Faire” (most know the Simon & Garfunkel version, but it predates them by a few hundred years) were made less impossible by modern technology, but that doesn’t mean that they’re exactly easy. However, it provided the basis for the book, and a decidedly interesting retelling of a ballad that, well, generally isn’t retold. I generally like ballad tales — see this for my favorite example — and Ms. Werlin makes a story that absolutely retains the human, personal element, while still keeping the historical and universal context of a song that has remained in the popular knowledge for so long.

I find it necessary to warn readers that the aforementioned “unfortunate event” is rape. Although it’s described in less-than-detailed terms, Ms. Werlin leaves absolutely no room for interpretation otherwise (as well she shouldn’t) and readers who are sensitive to such subjects should consider themselves forewarned. I didn’t know it was coming, and it was a bit of a shock. The aftermath is surprisingly believable, as is Lucy’s nearly supernatural determination to continue the pregnancy, once she knows it’s happening. Her foster mother, Soledad, is a midwife, so they both know what’s coming, and they know that life will be difficult.

Lucy’s life is made simultaneously easier and more complicated by the presence of Zach Greenfield, a longtime neighbor who is staying with the Markowitzes for the summer. Easier, of course, because he is just a couple years older than Lucy and has volunteered to stay around and help her with the tasks, as well as providing emotional support, but more complicated, being that there is an emotional connection and emerging relationship. Lucy and Zach’s struggle with this, especially in the aftermath of her rape, is somewhat condensed, but read as convincing to me, based on their history. Of course, the ballad and the story are about true love, so it is necessary for Lucy to have a real love interest, but I liked Zach on his own merits.

Overall, it’s definitely a book for somewhat older readers (probably age 14 or 15 and older), but even adults will find the story warm and the characters interesting. There’s a strong theme on families — what makes one, and that the family you choose (or who chooses you) is just as much yours as the one you’re born into. The good guys are obviously good and the bad guys obviously bad, and the end is satisfying. Those who like romantic tales will certainly be satisfied, and the preternatural/fantastic elements should be enough for urban/contemporary-set fantasy readers. 4.5/5 stars.

Lucien Mulholland is a fifteen-year-old twenty-first-century English boy, who is unfortunately dying from a brain tumor. Arianna is a fifteen-year-old sixteenth-century Talian girl living in an alternate universe where Remus founded Italy instead of Romulus. The connection? A journal, that allows Lucien to travel in his sleep from England, where he is doing poorly, to Talia, specifically Bellezza (an alternate Venice), where he is hale and healthy. Arianna wants nothing so much as to be a mandolier (gondolier), despite her gender, so she sneaks into town for the trials. There, she meets Lucien, recently traveled and confused, and they get caught up in the politics and plotting of the time. The Di Chimici (Medici) family wants nothing so much as to kill Bellezza’s Duchessa — can two teenagers help stop that from happening?

Ms. Hoffman’s alternate Italy is a very detailed and fascinating place. Those who are more intimately familiar with alternate-universe theory will have to suppress their disbelief that all the same locations and personages would have evolved, in remarkably similar fashion, with such an early (pre-Roman empire, obviously) split. Those who are more familiar with more science-fictiony time- and space-travel will also have to suspend that knowledge; yes, Lucien is simultaneously traveling back some six hundred years and over a distance of some miles. However, if one can set these concerns aside and go with the flow of the story, it’s captivating.

Lucien is perhaps not the most fascinating character; he really seems to have no traits that distinguish him from many other fictional English schoolboys, but his role as a sort of Everyman cast into a strange situation fits. The cast, primarily Talians, surrounding him is wonderful. Arianna is strong-willed, independent, and intelligent; Rodolfo is enigmatic but warm; the Duchessa herself is rich and complex. Another favorite character of mine is Dr. William Dethridge; he speaks in a form of Shakespearean English, and it’s quite amusing to have to sound things out through his eccentric (and historically accurate, in that way where English spelling wasn’t standardized until much later) spelling. Lucien’s parents are quite sympathetic, too; they perhaps have the hardest lot in the story, with a dying son.

The tale didn’t go exactly where I expected. The characters make some hard choices, and there are on-screen deaths (more than one) of sympathetic characters. It’s actually, despite the somewhat hokey setup, a great story about leadership, choices, politics, and life. There are a few twists and turns that I didn’t even see coming. In short, Ms. Hoffman has set up an interesting world, with interesting characters and a surprisingly refreshing plot. Her research into the standard-universe Italy shows, although not irksomely so, and the details about mask-making, the lagoon, and lace were a welcome addition. I am very much looking forward to reading more books in this series. 4/5 stars.

The Cinderella story is a common one throughout many cultures, and Ms. Napoli has chosen to set her variant of the tale in Ming-Dynasty China. Xing Xing’s mother dies when she is very small, and her father remarries, to a woman with a daughter close to Ping’s age. The stepmother (called Stepmother) has decided to bind her daughter (Wei Ping)’s feet, in order that she will be able to attract a man of a much higher social status. And of course, once the father dies, Stepmother treats Xing Xing as if she’s the lowest kind of servant, even so far as to sending her off to try to sell green dates as some sort of false miracle cure to raise money. One day, there is a fair in town, and Xing Xing finds some of her mother’s old clothing (including shoes) to wear into town . . .

As with most (if not all) of Ms. Napoli’s books, this is a short volume, barely two hundred pages. However, the story and the characters are, as usual, extraordinarily well-developed in such a short time period. Xing Xing’s father, who barely shows up, is shown to be a great father, albeit a bit ineffectual in reining in his second wife; Stepmother is, of course, cruel, but it is all with love for her daughter. There’s a secondary character, a doctor, who helps Xing Xing considerably, and whose presence I enjoyed for the short time he appears. The details — Xing Xing’s father’s pottery, a fish in a pond, the help that a neighbor gives them — are wonderful, and add crystal points of light to the narrative.

I’m not necessarily one to judge other cultures prematurely and I do understand some of the sociological reasoning behind foot-binding, but from all descriptions that I’ve read (including this one), it’s a painful, torturous practice that generally involves breaking, healing, and rebreaking the feet. There are a lot of places in which the process can go wrong, and it does — Wei Ping’s feet are infected more than once. There’s also an awful scene — straight out of original versions of the tale, I’ll mention — where Stepmother cuts off Wei Ping’s toe. Fortunately, we don’t see much of it on stage, but it still made me cringe. There’s also more cruelty to animals than I’m generally comfortable with. It is, as a matter of fact, a rather violent book, but a good deal of that is in keeping with the original story.

With this story, as per usual with Ms. Napoli’s books, I didn’t feel that I was reading the story for enjoyment so much as edification, and watching the author show off her linguistic and cultural knowledge. Although I do often read books for both edification and enjoyment (look for a review of George Eliot’s Middlemarch before too long), sometimes one overtakes the other and it nearly feels like a chore to read it. I can certainly appreciate her technical skill, but the book felt almost soulless to me. I suspect that other readers may have a different experience, and I will still recommend it highly, but while I could see the emotions intended in the text, they didn’t pull on me as much as I might have liked. 4/5 stars, mostly for achievement rather than enjoyment.

Paula is Jena’s younger sister, the scholarly, studious one. She has been helping her father with many of his business matters, and dreams of starting her own rare-book collection. When he mentions that he is going to travel to wherever-it-is, Paula immediately clamors to go along — and is allowed. For in the city, there is a woman named Irene who has her own scholarly haven for women, and Paula would like to study there. They get to town, hire a bodyguard for Paula, and she begins her studies — but something is strange about the piece they have come to town to buy, called Cybele’s Gift. Many people are after it, and things are starting to happen — attacks, sudden withdrawals from the bidding, and the involvement of strange individuals including a pirate . . .

Our setting, for this volume of the story, is Istanbul, and we are still in the eighteenth century, as far as I could tell. It’s a great time and place to set a book; many things are all converging between the Eastern and Western worlds in that area at that time. The history of the Ottoman Empire is so rich, and Ms. Marillier didn’t even mine a significant percent of it. She didn’t need to — she set out to write a story about a merchant, his daughter, and an exotic, possibly magical piece, and wove in realistic details without overencumbering the story with the entire weight of Turkish civilization. However, Ms. Marillier included excellent details about being a woman at that time in that city, and I found them captivating.

The plot isn’t thoroughly novel; it’s sort of a puzzle story mixed with a love triangle wrapped up in some goddess lore. While it draws on many sources, though, it manages to take all the elements and mix them togehter into something that’s entirely its own. The puzzle story had enough detail to keep me interested (another example of a common puzzle story would be anything by Dan Brown), although not enough that I had figured everything out by the end. The love story was enchanting, and the goddess lore read as quite logical to me. While she isn’t that well-known, Cybele is actually a Phrygian earth/mother goddess sort who was worshipped in the Mediterranean in the past.

I liked Paula, a lot, but I’ve always liked truly brainy, bookish female characters. (What? I identify with them? No, really?) I’m sort of disappointed to realize that even if Ms. Mariller writes another book featuring this family, it will not be focused on Paula herself. Her swains — the pirate and the bodyguard — are also both interesting in their own ways. Paula’s father is much more interesting in this volume than in Wildwood Dancing, but that is most likely because he’s actually on stage for a larger percentage of the book. Irene, the Greek scholar, has quite a few secrets, and managed to retain my interest because of them.

This book has, as I’ve detailed above, a wonderfully exotic setting, a fascinating twist on a common plot, a great love story, interesting characters, and a satisfying resolution. In other words, I loved it, and I have no hesitation in giving it 5/5 stars.

The Thirteenth Child is set in an alternate universe, where North America wasn’t settled by Asians via the Bering Strait, and mammoths, dragons, and other various megafauna still roam most of the country. Eff Rothmer is the second-to-last child in her family — the thirteenth, to be precise — and the twin sister of Lan, who is the seventh son of a seventh son. He is considered particularly lucky and possessed of an amazing ability to do magic, and it was suggested to her parents by more than one relative that they should have drowned her at birth. When the twins are still young, the entire family moves out to Mill City, which is just on the edge of the frontier. Mr. Rothmer has gotten a job as a professor at the brand-new college there, and besides, it would be best to move somewhere where no one knows that Eff is the thirteenth child and Lan is a double-seven. Out there, they find all sorts of adventure — on both sides of the Great Barrier that keeps the rest of the country safe from the frightening flora and fauna that characterizes the wilderness.

I would be very much amiss if I didn’t mention that this novel has been a bit controversial recently because of its race issues. First of all, by not having the Asians settle North (or South) America (Columbia, in this book) via the Bering Strait (or boats or however), Ms. Wrede has essentially erased Native Americans/Indians/First People from history. Even if it’s a fantasy world, it is still being read by people in our world, and her choice interacts with the whole of American history and literature (where we have tried to erase the Native Americans time and time again). Second, the two non-white characters who show up over the course of the book are both Aphrikan (African, black), and they seem to have no other point in the book but to be Eff’s teachers.

I will absolutely give Ms. Wrede points back for including slavery and then having her characters fight it, albeit offstage; for having sympathetic non-white characters (I really liked Wash and Miss Ochiba, despite their limited roles); for having the characters who believe that Avrupean (European) magic is inherently superior be portrayed as bigoted; and for having a story that indicates, to me, that in the next volume, Eff will include an Hijero-Cathayan (Asian) magician as one of her teachers. I do think that it’s very possible that non-white people will show up in better roles in the next volume. Unfortunately, I can’t actually give her bonus points for something she hasn’t published yet.

The book is significantly more complex than it appears at first. Primarily, it’s a coming-of-age tale set in a land of frontier adventure, but on the second level, it’s a story about self-esteem. Eff’s has been decimated over the years by being the thirteenth child; she undergoes some awful abuse at the hands of her cousins and one uncle. Even out in Mill City (a Minneapolis/St. Paul analogue, by the way) she assumes that everything that goes wrong is her fault. Her brother Lan, on the other hand, has been told that he is the savior of the world since birth, and by the end, there are indications that this might be a problem. On another level, it’s about synthesis. Eff turns out to be significantly more talented at Aphrikan magic than she is at Avrupean magic, despite the fact that she is of Avrupean heritage. Although being the thirteenth child is unlucky in Avrupean superstitions, it isn’t so in the other cultures, and Eff attempts to absorb that information. Out in the frontier, especially on the other side of the Barrier, people are attempting to use both magical and non-magical means to defend themselves — something that those in the big cities of the East wouldn’t consider, generally.

Another interesting addition is the Society of Progressive Rationalists, who eschew the use of magic. I am somewhat perplexed, I admit, regarding magic in the world. Is everyone talented at magic? In which case, I do not understand how the Society of Progressive Rationalists manage to eschew it. It is indicated by more than one character that if they don’t use their magic, it will build up inside them until it explodes. If so, how do the Rationalists do it? It’s very possible that some of this will be addressed in a future volume. That aside, I did enjoy including them, and I thought it presented another interesting thread in Ms. Wrede’s tapestry.

I liked the characters. I thought Eff was a bit wallpaper-pasty until most of the way through the book, but she really redeemed herself about two-thirds of the way through. I loved the rest of her family — even Rennie, her bossy sister — and I was quite fond of William, the son of the other professor of magic at the school. His transformation from annoying only child to a young man was actually rather fascinating, and I watched it with many expectations of what would happen in the future. The Aphrikan characters, as I mentioned before, were great, and I definitely want to see more of both Wash and Miss Ochiba — plus her family members, who seem to be equally accomplished and fascinating — in future volumes.

I am in a position of privilege, in that I have the option of disregarding race most of the time (I’m white and middle-class). It’s very possible that I would have merely accepted this story at face value without having read about it on the internet beforehand. Unfortunately, it’s not so much about the merit of the book — which is not so bad; aside from the race issues I’d give it 4/5 stars — but what the book unwittingly does — specifically, the erasure of Native Americans from American history via the lack of Asian discovery of the Americas. If one does read the book, and recommend it to YAs, I would consider it in tandem with Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, or other such work. Another option would be a large amount of considered, rational discussion. Again, it’s very possible that future volumes could redeem this book, but I can’t count on that until they’re published. Ms. Wrede is still on my auto-buy list, but I’m going to refrain from giving this book a conclusive number of stars as I am uncomfortable with doing so.

Estrella de Madrigal is a young woman in sixteenth-century, small-town Spain; her best friend is Catalina, who lives nearby. The girls are very close to each other until Estrella pays a little too much attention to Andres, Catalina’s cousin whom she is intended to marry. Unfortunately, this sets off a streak of jealousy and vindictiveness in Catalina. The town, Encaleflora, is undergoing some awful changes; it’s the time of the Inquisition (although they don’t call it that) and all the Jews and Muslims in town are suspect, even the ones who converted years and years ago. Estrella’s family behaves strangely — is it possible that they are secretly Jewish? And how will they survive?

This is not a happy book. The Inquisition rarely made people happy (that’s an intentional understatement, by the way), and being that our main character and her family are, in fact, secretly Jewish (it says so on the back of the book; this is not a spoiler), it’s obvious that there can be no purely happy ending. Early on, we see a non-secret Jew have all his books burned — religious treaties and medical volumes, mostly — in a public ceremony, of sorts. Later on, we see the dreadful treatment of the Muslims, who live in a cordoned-off section of town, and then, finally, we see the actual results of a trial for heresy on account of being a secret Jew. Obviously we don’t see much of the questioning, torture, and death, but we do see the motivation behind the accusers, which is mostly the 50/50 division of the accused/convicted (same thing) family’s belongings between the accuser and the state.

That having been said, there are some moments of absolute joy and clarity in the story. Andres and Estrella have a lovely relationship. There is a Muslim doctor’s wife who knows of Estrella’s mother’s predilection for the color blue, and the doctor’s wife sends Estrella’s mother some hens that lay blue eggs (and the associated rooster). Eventually Estrella and her grandfather — a surgeon and teacher — come to an understanding, and it is also lovely. Many of the interpersonal relationships in the de Madrigal family are strong and loving, and even despite the horror that is surrounding them, they find the ability to keep their faith strong.

Ms. Hoffman states in the Q & A at the end that she wrote the book as a way to consider many of the issues facing America today, and I can see the obvious parallels between the ‘terrorist hunting’ and the way that the Jews were treated. She also feels that teenagers are certainly old enough to handle thinking about this topic and all the implications, and I certainly agree. Although the book is only 166 pages long, it’s probably best read by those in sixth grade or older, due to the violence. I also feel it’s very important for young readers to realize that what they are reading is a parallel of the current times, and I’m glad that the Q & A and reading-group guides are included. 4.5/5 stars.