Superior Saturday by Garth Nix

This is the sixth, and penultimate, book in Nix’s Keys to the Kingdom series, and it rather shows. The greatest strength of this series has always been the world building in the realms that Arthur encounters, and that continued to be true in this book.

I mean, immortal, superjaded and pragmatic children building skyscrapers miles high in a word where it never stops raining, aided by artificial wings! What’s not to love?

Unfortunately, so much time is spent catching us up with the previous five books and setting up the last book that Nix barely had time to go “Look! Flying child architects!” before the book was over. Which is not to say it was a bad book or that it wasn’t a pleasant read, but it wasn’t long enough to spend much time on the funnest parts, and it was very much a “getting ready for the end” book.