Although it's too long and too full of ideas, the final novel of The Wicked Years is Maguire's best book since Wicked. It's full of magic again, chock full of characters we've met before and a handful of new ones. Plotlines are mostly resolved and Oz is left in relatively good shape. But I also can't believe the book to be truly great, I'm afraid. There's a longing for an epic scope here but a focus that is distinctly parochial and they never quite mesh, so the ending (as terrific a resolution as it might be) feels a bit rushed. I'm happy to see the series over and ended on such a beautiful note - but I'll always believe the thing to be ultimately a failure to achieve the full potential.Quite a bit more discussion about this at Raging Biblioholism: http://wp.me/pGVzJ-p3
