Wildwood Imperium (Wildwood Chronicles #3)

Gr 5-8--Wildwood's varied cast of characters gathers once again. Prue, the Oregonian outsider whose "Bicycle Revolution" toppled a repressive government, now obeys the Council Tree, which prophesies that peace will come if engineers Esben and Carol Grod awaken the Dowager Governess's mechanical son. Add the Unadoptable children, the tyrant of the Industrial Waste, the fate of Curtis and the Bandit King, the power hungry Verdant Empress, and the crumbling interim Wildwood government, and the result, ending with reunions and rescues, requires notetaking to keep the details straight. Meloy uses a Dickensian style of alternating chapters to interleaf more than five concurrent story lines. Readers will need to be familiar with the previous books. There is little recapitulation of past events here, and chapter transitions can be confusing. Character development necessarily takes a backseat to events, although the unhinged Jeoffrey Unthank's dramatic reappearance is a delightful cameo. Prue's quest, while important, doesn't seem to personally resonate with her, and there's not much space given to her feelings on the matter. Given the challenging scope of this work, however, Meloy reunites his characters in a manner most of the series readers will find satisfying.--Caitlin Augusta, Stratford Library Association, CT