The Goblin Wood

Book: The Goblin Wood
Author: Hilari Bell
Audience: Teen
In a Nutshell: hedgewitch leads goblins, knight tries to catch hedgewitch, nothing is as simple as it seemed

Makenna is a hedgewitch with limited power. She and her mother's kind used to be quietly accepted and used by the villages for healing and spells. Then the Hierarch and his priests declared all non-official magic evil. The villagers killed her mother, but she escaped, flooded the village, and swore off all human relationships. The goblins, who have also been declared evil and are no longer fed and appeased nearly so often, follow her and cleverly torment her until she finally captures one named Cogswallop, which starts her friendship with the goblins.
Five years later, she has become their "general" as the goblins drive away the increasing number of human settlers coming beyond the (human-built) Goblin Wall and into their northern woods.

Tobin, an honorable young knight convicted, punished, and exiled for a crime his brother commited, has a chance to redeem himself by leading the Hierarch's forces to the "Sorceress" controlling the goblins. He is soon captured by Makenna and the goblin army and gradually discovers that the goblins are not mindless savages, Makenna is not an evil sorceress, and the Hierarch and his priests do not have the pure motives he once thought they did.

I have yet to read a less-than-really-good book by Hilari Bell. She weaves in enough complex politics within her worlds to make the story that much more interesting, but never so much as to get confusing. Makenna is a fierce and independent character, and Tobin is very likable despite his oversimplified black-and-white views of the world early on. They both change and grow and there's action and adventure and cute goblin children and ain't that just the way a good book should go down?