I started out Garth Nix’s’es Keys to the Kingdom series enjoying it a lot, and lately have found the individual volumes to be weak and lacking in incident. Lady Friday had some nice bits, but there just wasn’t enough there to make a book, I thought. And now, after more than a year, I’ve finally read Superior Saturday, and it’s even more lacking in incident. Our Hero goes to a handful of places and has conversations with people for a while, and then hitches a ride on somebody else’s plot for a while, gets one of the two necessary plot coupons, hitches another ride on another plot, gets into a brief fight and then the book ends, with some doubt about the acquisition of the second plot coupon. Although of course he did get it, because otherwise we couldn’t go on to the next book.
On the other hand, there are a couple of very nice images (the tower of shifting gridded cubicles, for one), and there is a gathering sense of purpose to the whole thing at last. I’m beginning to wonder if I would enjoy the series a lot more if I had read them all together, one after the other, as one book. That’s usually a bad idea, at least for me, as YHB’s level of annoyance about an author’s style (or other authorial mismatches with what I’m looking for in a book) tends to accumulate over time. On the other hand, what is annoying me the most about this series is the way I get to the end of the book and nothing much has happened, except of course the acquisition of the plot coupons. The things that ought to annoy me about getting down to the fifth and sixth books in the series don’t annoy me, in part because he really is nifty at coming up with new locations and images, and in part because I’m enjoying the writing. So maybe that’s the way to go.
Of course, it’s too late now. The next book is the last one. Ah, well.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.