Across the Great Barrier (Frontier Magic #2)

Across the Great Barrier by Patricia C. Wrede is the second book in her Frontier Magic series - an historical fiction series where the people who settled the Wild West used magic.

After helping to save the settlements west of the Great Barrier last summer, Eff has been invited to go back west to help a professor with a study of the wildlife. Little is known about life outside the Great Barrier - a wall of magic that surrounds the settled part of the United States and keeps magical creatures out.

With the help of a guide who is a circuit magician, Eff and Professor Torgeson will study the plants and animals that have re-inhabited the lands destroyed by magical mirror bugs last summer. No one travels without a guide due to the dangers of the west.

Wrede has created an alternative history of the United States which combines elements of westerns and fantasy to tell a story of courage and exploration. Though this second book reads a bit like the middle book in a trilogy, Eff's story is advanced as readers learn more about her world. Look for book three, The Far West, sometime in the future.

Wrede, Patrica. (2011). Across the Great Barrier. New York: Scholastic.