Keefe’s Adventures in the Human World
Keepers of the Lost Cities fans have learned that the story has plenty of twists and turns. And some of those include the way the books are released. In order to fully tell the story, author Shannon Messenger realized she needed to tell the story of the time that Keefe spent in the human world during the first part of Stellalune, book nine in the series. And so we got Unraveled, book 9.5 in the series.
It goes without saying that if you haven’t started this series yet, don’t jump in here. Not only are there massive spoilers, but you’ll be very confused. But you’ll enjoy the journey along the way, so definitely pick up these books.
This book picks up where book 8.5 ended. (Told you there were lots of twists and turns in the series itself.) In order to protect his friends from his new abilities, Keefe leaves the Elfin world behind to hide out among the humans. While his first attempts are rocky, he soon finds a way to survive. And then he hits on an idea to not only figure out how to control his new abilities but also to figure out some things from his past. Will he succeed at either?
Yes, I’m being vague here. Remember what I said about spoilers. Although, anyone who has read Stellalune can pretty much guess the setup of this book. The important thing would be the details along the way.
This book in the series is only 400 pages. Compared to some of the volumes we’ve gotten, it’s practically novella length. Even so, I felt like some things could have been cut. Yes, I get what they were supposed to be showing, but I felt like it took us longer than it needed to to get to the meat of the story.
But once we got there, yes, we got some interesting developments. Things we didn’t know yet. And I’m very curious to see how everything is going to come into play for the rest of the series.
I do want to discuss one aspect of the book that is causing controversy in the reviews I’ve seen. In the course of his travels, Keefe meets a couple of characters who are gay or lesbian. They are so unimportant that they don’t even get names, although Keefe does think it is nice that they can live their lives as they see fit. These references take up maybe two pages of the entire book, so clearly they are extremely minor. But that also makes them feel a little forced into the universe that’s been created. Do I wish they were not there? Absolutely. As an adult reading the books, they are easy to tune out. But parents will want to know it is there is they want to talk them over with their kids.
Let’s move on, shall we?
Over the course of the book, Keefe travels all over the globe. While some of these scenes are the ones that slowed down the plot, I did find some of them fun watching Keefe’s reaction to what we take for granted as humans.
And yes, we also got some nice character development. We also got a couple scenes from Stellalune from Keefe’s point of view, which was really interesting given all that had come in this book.
While Unraveled isn’t as action packed as I would have liked, it will still prove to be important going forward. Fans of the series will be glad they picked it up.
Check out the rest of the Keeper of the Lost Cities books.
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