There’s some really cool harkening back to previous books that goes on as well. This story is at least as exciting as the last one and gives more development to some of the characters that seemed gratuitous in the last book. As the boy scouts say – and Scar from the Lion King as it happens, he must have been a boy scout – “Be Prepared.” What I am saying is that, while this current series of Tennis Shoes Adventure books is quite enjoyable and very exciting, they are a bit uneven. On the other hand I’ve seen authors try the other way and it is infuriating and painful to wait six years to read a book and then find out after a thousand pages that the overall net effect of the book was that nothing happened. On one hand the pointless parts are… pointless. I’m undecided whether or not this is a complaint. If he gave each story equal time in each book the pace of the story would slow to that of a lazy stroll. This is one of those tradeoffs that I mentioned earlier. Certain characters seem to have almost pointless plotlines for a couple of books until their story takes front and center and becomes the biggest adventure yet. The pacing that I refer to is the balance between characters. Things happen all the time and frequently but not so much that it becomes droll. Heimerdinger is, as always, very fast paced. I have my doubts – but it could be possible. He says the end of this series will take only one more book. I saw some hints in the last book but they’re more apparent in this one. Heimerdinger is beginning to have some of those problems. After that it becomes a civil engineering disaster. I’ve only rarely seen a series that can remain cohesion for more than five books. Once you add more books than that you’re going to have to accept tradeoffs. Doing it over five books is theoretically feasible.
Doing it over a trilogy is a lifetime pursuit. Doing all of this in a single book is a monumental task. Then make all of them converge to the same place and time for the ultimate showdown/last battle/what have you. Oh yeah, also make sure that each group has equal page time and is working toward the same things in the end, although it’s not readily apparent that that’s the case. Add to that the fact that people want each book to have its own complete arc with a climax for each group of characters, all roughly at the same time and also making progress toward the overall story for the series. When you’ve got hundreds or even dozens of characters scattered all across time and space and working toward seemingly different goals things get complicated. In fact every long series that I’ve read has this same problem. Then it cascades in a giant waterfall of uncountable subplots and side characters. Robert Jordan’s series is beautiful, and then it starts to crumble around the edges. The problem is that most of them don’t realize it. Some authors handle complex stories brilliantly.
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