Joined in 2023 
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If you love all things British enjoy it with a fresh pot of tea, china teaware and a generous portion of lemon drizzle cake. You will need sustenance just in case (likely) you cannot put it down. The pace of the story is relentless. After plunging Merlin into mortal danger in the first few chapters, there is no let up, apart from the eating of many slabs of cake. The world building is excellent. The storyline not too convoluted and yet enough to keep you guessing. I've seen this described as YA fiction. The original book I bought was from the fantasy section. I'd label it a crossover book, can be read by all ages. Unless you have a nervous disposition 😉 This is the sequel and while it maintains the good humor and charm of the first book, I found it to be largely disappointing. It should really go without saying that for a voracious book reader (like myself!) books about books, or libraries, or bibliophiles should be an automatic win.
Garth Nix was born in 1963 in Melbourne, Australia, to the sound of the Salvation Army band outside playing 'Hail the Conquering Hero Comes' or possibly 'Roll Out the Barrel'. Garth left Melbourne at an early age for Canberra (the federal capital) and stayed there till he was nineteen, when he left to drive around the UK in a beat-up Austin with a boot full of books and a Silver-Reed typewriter.Susan, our heroine, is drawn into trouble with Merlin and Vivien, when the girls follow him into a magical map and make a gruesome discovery of piles of dead bodies. There are 26 and since we’ve already seen the death of the last one, whose surname began with a Z, we know the cycle will begin again with an A, but not just any A - Susan Arkshaw. Susan is a demi-human, her father being the Old Man of Coniston. This gives her the power to commune with stone and metal: useful traits in dealing with the serial killer entity from the Old World, the Lady of Stone. And I need Merlin to just keep being his best self. (He is my sweet baby and he deserves good things, and honesty... his relationship with Susan is just not convincing me.) The Plague has left a population divided between Elites and Ordinaries—those who have powers and those who don’t; now, an Ordinary teen fights for her life. It’s always an obnoxious character trope in fantasy and I’m disappointed to see this from Nix, who has previously always managed to write a relatively peaceful breed of fantasy that is YA appropriate without engaging in this level of sanctimony.
All the characters are excellent especially our core group of three. Merlin is always fun with his outrageous dress sense, Vivian is calm, cool and collected, and Susan is developing her skills so fast she scares herself. She also seems to have an innate ability to know what to do when faced with these mythical beings.
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If they do not stop her, she will soon kill again. And this time, her target is not an ordinary mortal. While I love Merlin and Vivian, Susan has gotten significantly more irritating, overearnest and precious. I especially don’t care for characters in fantasy novels who get high and mighty about refusing to get their hands dirty when it comes to any sort of violence, while (of course!) being more than willing to let others take care of the tough stuff when they’re actually threatened. I know that Garth can write. And I did say that I would want to read the next book in the series. And here it is!
Someone pointed out to me that this series is actually YA - oops, not been one of them for many decades. I say bah to that - I'm in my 50s and I love it!In comparison, whilst generally still quirky, the secondary characters are still a little nondescript, however, although the point is the need to focus on events around Susan. Review copy was received from NetGalley. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. Although this is the second book in the series, I haven’t read the first one. This book is so well written though that I had no problems keeping up with the plot, especially because certain things from the first book were referenced to and included.
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