The Stonekeeper

Having looked through some of the other Amulet books, I feel like this series gets much better. I like this one, but it’s clearly just a start, just getting its footing. It seems a little simple right now. It starts out beautifully (and tragically), but then moves to the pretty clichéd, “We have to move into this broken-down house in the middle of nowhere, kids,” thing (à la Spiderwick, Coraline, um … lots of horror movies), and then just as it starts to pick up again, it ends.

I was also disappointed because I love Kibuishi’s environments - his cities and backgrounds and such - and this book was almost entirely devoid of them. I felt like the characters were interacting in a vacuum too often.

The house robot at the end, though, is just more proof that my faith in Kibuishi is justified, and I’m going to buy book 2 very, very soon.