Amulet Book Nine: Waverider by Kazu Kibuishi

I still think Kazu Kibuishi is more a pantser than a plotter; Amulet has been the kind of series that keeps adding complications, that has elements that pop in unexpectedly - even in this last volume - that bounces around among semi-separate plotlines as if it's remembering all of the things it still has to do. But Waverider, this ninth book, does end the series, and does wrap up everything, so it gives hope to all of the other pantsers out there - even the ones who have been struggling with series running for longer than the fifteen years Amulet has been - that they, too can land their respective planes.

Amulet is structured like a prose epic fantasy, portal sub-division: three people from the "real world" (mom Karen, tween Emily, younger brother Navin) were transported to a fantasy world, one of them got a talisman of great power, they were separated and rejoined, they made friends and allies and enemies and enemies-into-allies, battled a Dark Lord that tempted the holder of the magical talisman, and so forth. Waverider is the end, so it's the one where the heroes (all of them, even the ones who were sub-villains earlier) finally rejoin and defeat that Dark Lord conclusively, so the three main characters can finally return to their own world and lives.

That makes it sound pretty conventional, and Amulet is pretty conventional. But things are genres for a reason, and Amulet has been a strong genre exercise: well-done, and decent at characterization, and with an engaging, friendly art style. It has been the first big epic fantasy series for an entire generation of readers, the oldest of which are probably only in their late twenties now. There's nothing wrong with doing a genre exercise, particularly if you do it well. Kibuishi did it well: now that he's done, we can see that he didn't run down every idea and sidebar (there's some new elements in this book that feel like either material that would have been expanded if the series had run longer or potential hooks for an eventual sequel), but he kept focus on his important characters and maneuvered them all into the right places for his big ending.

I should probably link back to my posts on the earlier books, for reference: The Stonekeeper, The Stonekeeper's Curse, The Cloud Searchers, The Last Council, Prince of the Elves, Escape from Lucien, Firelight, and Supernova. In the usual epic fantasy way, there were a lot of events to get to this point, and the fans of the series, I'm sure, are still arguing about many of them.

Summing up: it's the end of a big epic fantasy series. No one should start reading with this book. If you want to see what epic fantasy is looking like to a huge swath of young people, Amulet is the place to go - especially if you like your fantasy in comics form. But start with The Stonekeeper.