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"The third and final book of the brilliant and captivating Trickster Trilogy. From the bestselling author of the Scotiabank Giller-prize shortlisted Son of a Trickster and Trickster Drift. Jared, now 18, wakes up in a hospital bed, feeling like hell. Some of the people he loves--the ones who are deaf to magic--assume he fell off the wagon after a tough year of sobriety and went on a bender to end all benders. They think that's why movers found him naked, dangerously dehydrated and confused in the basement of his mom's old house in Kitimat. The truth for Jared, who has spent two years running from it, is so much worse. He finally knows for sure that he will never be normal because he is the son of Wee'git, a Trickster, and a Trickster himself. He is actually in such bad shape because he was forced into mortal combat with his father's sister, Aunt Georgina, a maniacal ogress hungry for his power. In the struggle, he transported her and her posse of shape-shifting coy wolves to another dimension where the coy wolves all died. Now Georgina doesn't only want to eat him, she wants revenge on his whole family. There's more bad news: the only person in his life who is happy that he's a Trickster is his ex, Sarah. Everyone else he loves is either pissed with him or at risk of becoming an unwitting victim of the darker forces he's unleashed in their world. His mother Maggie, a hard-partying, gun-toting, tough-as-nails witch, resents like hell that Jared has taken after his father, but she is also determined that no one is going to eat her boy. For Maggie it's simple: Kill or be killed, bucko. Soon Jared is at the centre of an all-out war. A horrible place to be for the sweetest Trickster there's ever been, one whose first instinct is not mischief and mind games but to make the world around him a kinder, safer, place. As his cousin Kota would say, Sucks to be you, Jared."--… (more)
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Eden Robinson offers a pacy conclusion to her Trickster trilogy. It is busy and involved and, if you’ve been waiting two years for it to arrive, you might be wise to go back and reread Trickster Drift before jumping straight into this. Otherwise it can be a bit confusing trying to keep everything straight, at least at first. But still a satisfying adventure.
Enjoy!
But as soon as Jared (a name I just can't get along with, sorry) arrives in Vancouver, the plot bogs down in a confusing series of shared meals with extended family/friends. We're unfailingly kept up to date on who's baking what and what's for breakfast or in the slow cooker and whether it's coffee or tea to drink. I was just about able to keep the central core of characters straight in my mind — his mother, his aunt, his gran (or two grans?), his ex-girlfriend — but in the second half a whole new cast shows up — Eliza, Olive, Justice, Hank, Bob the Octopus — with hardly a hint of introduction. Look, I get it, I can't expect to jump into book III of a trilogy and know who everyone is, but this was confusing as hell, and the confusion was only amplified by our hero's habit of randomly losing and regaining consciousness.
There's one exciting sequence about a third of the way through but even there, I felt Robinson could have made much more of the gruesome torture method she came up with. I'm a total wuss when it comes to torture scenes but I hardly flinched at this one.
Then it's more communal dining (including a recipe for vegan meringues — great!) and repeated references to the status of the "teakettle" (does anyone actually call it that?) while the gang discuss in the vaguest terms the trouble they're in (Jared's other aunt the ogress operating from a distance). Just hanging out really. I'm sure it's great if you've enjoyed the first two books and have some idea who the hell these people are. But I could have used some action. And the climax, when it finally comes, is a massive let-down. I wish there'd been more shapeshifting and general anarchy and tricksterishness and less bleary teen moping and tea drinking. For example there was some sort of otter woman who I'd have liked to see throw down, and a pair of twins who I think were otters too? I did like the Wild Man of the Woods though, and it's always nice to read a story set in Vancouver.