49. The Chestnut King by N.D. Wilson

The Chestnut King by N.D. Wilson (Canada) - (US)
The 100 Cupboards, Book 3

Pages: 482
Ages: 9+
Finished: Feb. 27, 2011
First Published: Jan. 26, 2010
Publisher: Random House
Genre: children, fantasy
Rating: 4/5



First sentence:

In a world tangled in places with this one, both near and far from where we stand, near and far from where our grandfathers are standing as children, near and far from our past, from our now, from our never, there are two seas separated only by a long strong belt of land.

Acquired: Borrowed a copy from my local library.

Reason for Reading: Next (and last) in the trilogy.

It's the final showdown in this volume. Nimiane is making her move to take over the empire, her hatred for Henry's bloodline makes his whole family targets of her wrath, especially him, since they are tied together with the blood bond and she knows how powerful he could become. Most of the book takes place within the worlds of the cupboards, with the doors being used for travel and a few pit stops are made here and there to the house in Kansas in the process. People actually notice a few strange things happening where the house used to be and the area is becoming popular to the paranormal events -type crowd. Henry learns a lot more about who he is and who he could be while Henrietta becomes much more of a teammate than she has ever been before, though she and Henry do end up on different teams at times. I think all the characters have grown as people throughout this series and that is always a good feeling to have at the end of a series.

The paranormal elements of this volume where quite intriguing. The full truth comes out about Henry's scar and his ties to Endor because of it. Henry's case is an exciting one as at one point it boils down to the options of giving up and dying quickly or going forward to die with honour or at least die trying. But things are never always as they seem and at the end we can sigh with relief at the happy ending. In fact, this is my main problem with the book, the ending is too pat. All ends were finished off just so perfectly nicely that it destroyed some of the story's believability for me. The other thing I find annoying is the trend of these juvenile fantasies, with book 1 being 200 and some pages, book two pushes the 400 mark and then book 3 has to top them all off by trying to become a 500 page tome. That is what actually made me take so long to get started on this book since I had enjoyed the first two books so much.

An interesting, well-thought out fantasy world and story that delivers an exciting conclusion while on the other hand draws out the trilogy when it might have been trimmed a little to make it a bit move quicker and therefore more tense.