To be honest, it took me three weeks to get through this book. Not that it was overly long (at 341 pages, I don’t consider it a long book), and not that I hated it (though to be honest, I would probably have to work up an emotion to it past “meh” to get towards something like hate), but because my reading of it was completely overshadowed by the fact that Gallifrey, my 17 year old Calico cat, died in the middle of reading it, and I couldn’t muster up the emotional energy to pick it up again. I finally finished it, but fair warning, this is not going to be my greatest review. Total candor, I finished this book solely because I’ve set a goal of how many books I want to review this year and haven’t hit it yet.
After the events of the first book, Emily and Wendell are still looking for the Door back to his kingdom. This desire is put into hyperdrive when the assassins Wendell’s stepmother sent to kill him attack in the middle of a lecture he’s giving, having first attempted at his birthday dinner the night before. (Emily missed this as she went home early because it was late and crowds bother her; I’m an introvert too girl, but even I understand sometimes you gotta suck it up for a loved one.) Now Emily, Wendell, Emily’s niece/put-upon assistant Ariadne, Emily’s Grim dog Shadow, and the pompous Dr. Rose must travel to the Austrian Alps with a dismembered faun’s foot (which both matters the narrative and is completely superfluous) hoping to find the Door (and Danielle deGrey, the Dryadologist that disappeared years before, possibly through said door) before Wendell dies. Or, even worse in Emily’s opinion, she has to answer either “yes” or “no” to his proposal of marriage.
I suppose I’ll get the last book in the trilogy, as the worst I can say about this book is that it was blandly harmless. Emily is still at times a bad combination of Hermione Granger and Wynne-Jones’ Sophie, more obsessed with being right and her comfort than practically anyone or anything else (excepting maybe Shadow.) Wendell is still all hair, laziness, cleaning, and magic-induced straw that stirs the drink yet unimportant Deus ex Machina; when the story needs him to he’s up and about, saving Emily, cleaning house, and demanding morning-after cuddling; when it doesn’t need him, he’s lying around near death and basically a piece of the furniture. Ariadne, to be honest, should probably have quit working for her aunt a time ago, except for the feeling I have that her father would have pulled her out of school to become a dressmaker if she wasn’t her aunt’s assistant. Rose, deGrey, and Eichornn (the other Dryadologist who disappeared in the Alps, him while looking for deGrey) got real old, real fast. Rose improved somewhat by the end, but not really by that much.
Shadow, once again, was probably the best part of the book, as well as the returning brownie. Added to the “I want either figures or plushies of these characters” are the fox-fairy Snowball, and Orga, Wendell’s cat. Orga actually helped me, because in some ways all cats are Orgas; affectionate when they want to be, vicious when needs suit them, and utterly indifferent to anyone attempting to change the agenda of the cats’ lives. I need more Orga in the last book. I also probably need more of Wendell’s stepmother; not because she’s a great character, but because where the book leaves her made me wonder what exactly other than a plot point was the point of her?
As I said, I will get the last book, but I am glad this is only a trilogy, because this one just seemed a little page-filler draggy.
My Gallifrey, aka “little Miss Murder Mittens”.