The Serpent Gift

In this one someone from the mother's past shows up and threatens the peace the family managed to find in the Highlands. After this point the description of the plot part of the review will be one big spoiler. You learn real fast who this stranger is, but I know some of you are super sensitive to such things.

So Dina's dad is finally with us, yay. Now up until this point we ave been introduced to some small mentions and such of magic. Of course dragons too. But we weren't told about whole different branches of it. Now of course I had a feeling Dina's dad was going to be someone, as they never even mentioned him, really and it was quite obvious. Here he turns out to be a Blackmaster, someone who is able to create illusions, to make people see things not there, to bring them dreams with his magical flute. It's made obvious his whole family is something big and important and in their own field they are big ones, though we never get to meet them. Something I find interesting is that... I feel there is a bit of an issue with how Mellussina sees him and how he behaves. Not sure if this is an intentional artistic choice by the author, but it never gets properly explained. Meanwhile the family gets in trouble and Nice and Davin even end up in prison. Now this was so far the most dark thing in the books. I still think it's perfectly appropriate for children and I would even recommend it to them, but yeah. Some messed up shit happens.

Here is the thing with this series. I like the books. Duh. I like the individual stories. But this is book 3 in a 4 book series. You know when people say something is greater than the sum of its parts? I think in this case it's the exact opposite.
I am having a blast every single time I am reading a new book of this. But. I think the series as a whole could do much more with its interesting concepts. There is just so many questions and so much left to discover. It's almost like these small stories are just picked out little bits of a huge, epic saga.
Jim Butcher keeps talking about how he is going to write a YA companion series to his Dresden Files with Maggie, a child character and her dog being the protagonists. This series feels like that. Like there is something, big things going on outside the limited bubble of Dina's immediate circle and I would kill to be able to read that one as well. Now it's possible I'm just old. But even for a children's book, there could have been much more... I guess, opening up the world.
I'm still giving it a high rating, because the book itself if really nice. It's well-written, it's fun, the characters are good, the concepts are stellar. Maybe if there more book, maybe if the individual volumes were longer.
I don't feel the author treats the reader as stupid (Which is an issue with some children's books), more like we are only scratching the surface.

I would still recommend this to kids or adults who enjoy middle grade. I am definitely going to read the last book ,but I will forever wish it was more than this.