To start off, I did not discover this series as a middle-grade reader, which is the level this is recommended and advertised for. But frankly, I think that I could appreciate it more as a young adult and I might hesitate before handing this to an eight-year-old.
Right off the bat I was taken by the prose — the picture it painted of a crumbling motel or a hot summer’s day. The words rendered images with ease. “The sun dumped golden heat onto the flat back of Lake Michigan. It baked unwatered grass and persecuted Wisconsin cows. (…) Frogs, young and foolish, exploded while crossing sizzling asphalt streets.” ~ The Drowned Vault
Wilson’s ability to pick up on the unusual or so-relatable-it’s-funny instantly gave it a sense of character. I can still feel myself curled up on my bed, reading long past my bedtime, snorting aloud at the humor, instantly attached to the three Smiths.
But I’m getting a bit ahead of myself. What is this series even about? Well, here’s the Amazon blurb.
For two years, Cyrus and Antigone Smith have run a sagging roadside motel with their older brother, Daniel. Nothing ever seems to happen. Then a strange old man with bone tattoos arrives, demanding a specific room.
Less than 24 hours later, the old man is dead. The motel has burned, and Daniel is missing. And Cyrus and Antigone are kneeling in a crowded hall, swearing an oath to an order of explorers who have long served as caretakers of the world’s secrets, keepers of powerful relics from lost civilizations, and jailers to unkillable criminals who have terrorized the world for millennia.
N. D. Wilson, author of Leepike Ridge and 100 Cupboards, returns with an imagination-capturing adventure that inventively combines the contemporary and the legendary.
It’s been compared to Percy Jackson and Indiana Jones. I’ve never read Percy Jackson, but the Indiana Jones I can certainly vouch for — Indiana Jones meets Ingrid Jones’s Savvy and a bit of Septimus Heap.
This series was… unique. I can’t sum it up in one word. It was immersive. Lifelike. Complicated. Frankly, scary.
Nate has told the story on his podcast, Stories are Soul Food, of how his 100 Cupboards series gave a little girl nightmares — and yet she was still massively stoked to see him come visit her school. She loved the series.
Well, obviously I wasn’t getting nightmares and it is by far nowhere near the worst thing I’ve read. But I felt the same way as the girl about this one. And frankly, that means he was doing his job. I was getting attached. Scenes with the villain and his victims evoked something between Dekker’s Circle series and a Winter Soldier flashback — modified and toned down for kids, of course. I genuinely could not be sure all the heroes would survive. The villain was understandable and chilling and yet human.
But the heroes. The heroes were what I liked best. I enjoyed the pizazz of the long, tall Texan. A few words served immeadiately to paint William Skelton — unpredictable in all his antihero glory. And Rupert Greeves — a character who could take oodles of punishment, and yet it always meant something, a character who was torn and loving and so deeply motivated, darkly funny one moment, grim and fierce and heroic the next. And besides, who doesn’t love a British accent?
Most importantly, I ached when characters died. It takes a special book to get that reaction from me. I have read a ton. When it comes to book characters dying, I’m rather cynical and heartless, I must admit, and I won’t believe somebody’s dead unless I’ve seen the body and practically performed an autopsy. But there are some things out there that still hit hard — and this was one of them.
This book, was, of course, Christian. It was deeply Christian in its theme, though one or two mothers would protest against the words occasionally used. They’re not on the same level as cursing — still, they’d be unacceptable if I said them aloud in my household. Still, to any reader of older books, their meaning is understood. I mean, heck, there’s words in Narnia that mean different things today. Just keep that in mind. There was also one instance of a character using the Lord’s name in vain — the character was from the 1600s and didn’t have the straightest moral compass either.
There is violence, but there isn’t gore. No guts. Blood, but the worst scenes are not directly shown, being implied. Wounds get no worse than cuts, stabs, and broken bones. Shooting and swordfights, planes, and a wonderful menagerie of creatures are featured aplenty.
There were nods in the books to history, legend, and of course, fiction. Ben Sterling? Please. Any lover of Treasure Island knows who you really mean. And the Latin was a reminiscent touch for a student of classical education. I’m with Cyrus — never could stand conjugating verbs and all that.
I think this series’s highest merits were in its writing and its theme. I loved it when, in the middle of a dramatic scene, there was a touch of personification, a hint of quirk, enough to keep it light. And the theme? The deeper allegory behind it all? That’s gonna stick with me.
Now, I did think the ending was abrupt. I would have wanted a final scene-setting of them in the happily-ever-after, picking up the pieces and starting anew. But all the same, I think there’s a reason Wilson ended it the way he did. It was for the theme’s sake primarily, and of course, do we really need to know every detail? It’s like the Princess Bride. Does it matter who killed Humperdinck? If you have a problem with it, you go and imagine it happening for yourself. That’s exactly how this book is. You know who’s alive and who isn’t, and who got defeated and who got rescued and whether or not they saved the world, and that’s really all that matters. The reader doesn’t need to know the details about the characters’ lives afterwards. You can guess, you can speculate, you can imagine.
“Adventures are funny things. They always begin with the unexpected, but they always end with the promise of adventures yet to come.”
The Final Storm, Wayne Thomas Batson
I must admit I like my books best when there’s room for imagination. That’s why The Final Storm and the others of the Door Within trilogy vie for the top spot in my mind with the Green Ember. Those books left me enough ground to make more adventures in my head. As a writer, could you ask for anything more?
I leave you with some quotes from this book, some words I thought were beautiful.
“Cowards live for the sake of living, but for heroes, life is a weapon, a thing to be spent, a gift to be given to the weak and the lost and the weary, even to the foolish and the cowardly.“
“Love burns hotter than justice, and its roar is thunder. Beside love, even wrath whispers. Not one of us snatching breath with mortal lungs deserves such a gift, and yet every day such a gift is given. To love is to be selfless. To be selfless is to be fearless. To be fearless is to strip your enemies of their greatest weapon.”
“He walks the boneyard path, following in the steps of the one Mortal from whom even the Reaper fled in fear. (…) Only love can set a man’s feet on such a path.”
These are all from the mowhawked monk — also a distinctly quirky and hilariously funny character. You’re not going to get any characters mixed up in this series, believe me. In real life, I often get names tangled. I’ll remember your face, but some gears slip in the old noggin sometimes. But in this, you know just exactly who goes with which name.
This was a good series. I might not recommend it for younger readers — at least not without dicussion. There’s powerful allegories in here and some strong themes. I mean, when life and death are the topics, it’s usually always serious. But Wilson reminds us of joy at the end, of laughter.
That’s the sort of writer — the sort of person — I want to be. I want to be capable of handling the big stuff, of thinking critically and comparing it to truth, of understanding. But I also don’t want to lose sight of the end, or the rest stops along the way where the heart can be merry.
We’re pilgrims in this world, sojourners and warriors. But life isn’t all running, trying to stay ahead. Life is, as dear Niffy would say, a weapon, one to be wielded with love and laughter.
