A review of the Keepers of the Lost Cities books by Ian

The Keepers of the Lost cities series by Shannon Messenger was one of the first fantasy books I really got into (I stayed up wayyy too late several times while reading these books). Thus it has had a pretty major impact on me and helped to fuel my love of Fantasy (along with reading as a whole), so I almost immediately read the tenth book when it was released. And I enjoyed it, but I noticed that the book had a lot of filler. Which led me to view the 9 books I had already read a little more objectively, only to find that the other later books shared this filler, almost to a worrying degree. Now, probably due to nostalgia, I still love all of these books, but I am starting to worry about the ending to the series. Which finally leads me into the main topics of this blog post: What made these books good in the first place? And what makes this filler so worrying in the first place?

From what I remember, several details made me get really attached to this series. I think the thing that hooked me at first was the premise. I had never really read much low fantasy and really enjoyed all the world building in the first book. The magic felt intriguing and cool, along with the many creative mystical locations all worked together to draw me in. Although, the main component that got me to say for nine books were the characters. I like pretty much every character, but by far I love Keefe the most. Keefe really drew me in because of his sense of humor, along with the more mysterious aspects to his character. The main character, Sophie, is also a fun character to follow and learn about the world with. Fitz and his family were interesting mainly due to their interactions with the fantasy world’s government. I could go on and on about the characters but I think the final thing that really got me interested in this book was how high the stakes felt. Characters actions had real consequences, the villains felt threatening (the main characters rarely even had a complete victory), and I really cared about what happened to the characters. The book maintained these traits for the most part, although I have noticed the aforementioned filler starting to strain some elements.

Normally I dislike filler in pretty much everything I read. It just feels like my time is being wasted when the plot could be moving forward. Although, I did not really feel that way at first about this series, which is mainly due to the characters. As I have mentioned, I really like the characters present in these books, so I didn’t really mind filler while I was reading the series for the first time (also I read a ridiculous amount so things got going fast enough for me). But now I have noticed that some character interactions feel a bit repetitive and the passing is starting to suffer a bit. Overall though, I feel the filler enhances the characters. Where the filler begins to be a problem is in the stakes. You can only make high stakes last so long and while the character might be enhanced by the filler, the plot has started to take a hit (one of the later books only covers around 20 days that aren’t even super action packed when others cover months). Right now ten books have released with a potential eleventh that has been announced, which is quite ridiculous and worrisome (this series was 3 books originally!). The tenth book also ends in a way that introduces some entirely new plot threads that are only adding to my worry.

At the end of the day, even if this series’s ending is horrible I will most likely still hold it in high regard, as it did a lot for me as a child (or this is completely due to nostalgia, who knows). Although I really do hope that the author can get over the filler problem and give this amazing series an equally great ending.