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.