Reading for the first time as an adult, my first reaction is WHOA where is this series going, because this has serious "Saves the Day" energy.

Although, come to think of it, Meet Kaya has some "Learns a Lesson" vibes. At least, until you get to the beginning of this book and find that, well, maybe she hasn't yet.

I don't mean to be cranky that American Girl decided to ease away from their established patterns. There are good reasons for it - expanding beyond girls who celebrate Christmas is great - but I have always enjoyed how each series employs similar beats as a way of showing how girlhood, and people in general, stay the same despite the many changes each time period brings. So that's always something I'm looking for.

One way in which this one does feel like a "Learns a Lesson" story is that it expands Kaya's world, showing a little of nearby tribes - both enemies and allies - as well as giving us a sense of how broadly Kaya's family travels over the course of a year or so. She's at least somewhat familiar with a pretty large area, and she's well versed in herb lore and navigating by the stars.

The set-up that gets us there is... well you know it's going to happen if you read the cover of the book, so perhaps it's unfair to call it obvious. So of course Kaya is taken by raiders, along with Speaking Rain and (the raiders' main goal) a lot of horses, including Steps High.

(Tangent: I keep trying to type Singing Rain, presumably my brain conflating Speaking Rain and Singing Bird? Maybe we could have come up with a more distinct name, hmmm Janet?)

Once we get moving, this book (not unlike Meet Kirsten) is a lean, mean, plot-moving machine: roughly 10 pages of set-up, 10 pages of travel with the raiders, 20 pages of captivity at the Buffalo People's camp, 20 pages of escaping. (I noticed this because I was inclined to complain that it took foreeeeever to get to the camp and get the story going, but it's literally 8 pages from the raid to the camp. So it's just me getting bored by landscape-and-travel passages, per usual. Lord of the Rings took me a lot of peer pressure/encouragement, you guys.)

It's notable that the raiders and their people are not made out to be Bad Guys in any absolute sense, though obviously we don't like the, you know, raiding. Kaya describes a past raiding party in which her father and the other men reclaimed some horses - which suggests to me that they might sometimes be the instigators. Curious to see if that ever comes up.

All of the sign language is a really cool element - it makes sense as a way to trade more broadly in a time that has lots of spoken languages in a region. But I couldn't help wondering if Kaya's captors would also know that sign language, and if so, doesn't that make it easier for someone to "overhear" their early conversations? (As that doesn't happen, maybe I'm overthinking; also there is just no room in this book for anything else!)

The fight Kaya and Two Hawks have over gender roles is... honestly, it just makes me tired. Yes, fine, this boy is acting out because he's been forced to do women's work as a captive and he's over it. But also, there are only two of you alone in the wilderness and winter is literally coming: get over yourself already. Up to that point, it isn't clear from the first two books to what degree Kaya's culture is patriarchal - while there clearly are gender roles, there hadn't yet been any suggestion that one is more privileged. This comes a bit out of the blue and it's not especially welcome.

In the end, it becomes clear that this story needs to happen early in the series because it seeds plot points for later stories. Kaya now has vowed to help get Speaking Rain home, and presumably (in the tradition of Felicity and Penny), we haven't seen the last of Steps High. After all, you don't sell an expensive toy horse if it disappears forever early in the second book...