By Shannon Messenger
“Book 9.5 in the New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling Keeper of the Lost Cities series follows fan-favorite Keefe on his adventures in the human world during the events of Stellarlune. While his friends faced their own challenges in Stellarlune, Keefe was in the human world. Where did he go, who did he see…and what shocking secrets were revealed to him? This can’t-miss installment of the series is told entirely from Keefe’s POV and contains crucial clues about truths buried deep in the elvin world” (Goodreads).
I’m back again with another Keeper of the Lost Cities review. If anything marks the passage of time in my life, it’s the KOTLC series. I started following Sophie and her friends in about sixth grade, when only the fifth book had been released. I’ve attended each of Shannon’s author events every year since, gotten the signed Barnes & Noble exclusive editions of that year’s release, and even made the Sokeefe ship my entire personality for three years straight. I’ve now finished my first semester of college, and the series seems far away from completion.
The current conversation around Keeper seems to generally reflect my current opinions, which were only reinforced after reading this book and which I will probably describe thoroughly in this review. Most of the reviews and comments out there are coming from Shannon’s original readers, who have been following the series for a long time and are all about my age now. Though the series has not aged with us, we are all still very invested in the characters and the story. Unfortunately, a lot of problems have become obvious with each new release.
The first of these is how much the series has dragged on. I love Shannon and all her millennial quirkiness, but I can’t tell if she even knows how the series is going to end. Each new installment adds more questions and barely wraps any old ones up. My biggest problem with Unraveled was that the book spent a ton of time on a small side plot and did not offer any conclusions about it. Unless she does a miracle in the (hopefully) last book next year, I’m concerned that the ending will feel rushed and frantic.
The second big problem is the shifting focus from furthering to plot to fan service and shipping. It seems that as Shannon saw the fans’ love of Keefe and Sophie, she started to really focus on that subplot. A lot of plot points serve this subplot and lead to ship interactions – which is fun, but can slow down the story and feel fan-fiction-esque. Recent books in general have felt a lot like Shannon writing wish-fulfillment fan-fiction of her own world.
Despite these problems, Unraveled still had some redeeming qualities. I will definitely be anticipating the release of book 10, if only for the nostalgia.
No matter how much Shannon insisted that Unraveled was very important to the rest of the series and you need to have all the information, I just couldn’t see its importance. It could’ve been an extra chapter at the end of Stellarlune or something.
Keefe spent the entire time doing something important – for him. He worked a lot on his mental health and coming to terms with his new abilities, which was great but not really something that needed an entire book. The little loose thread he was following throughout Unraveled wasn’t even concluded – in fact, only new questions were raised. The plot seemed to be heading towards the tying of at least one loose end, but it never happened. Because of this, Unraveled felt like endless fan service. Keefe is depressed. He tries some human food. Keefe misses Sophie. He weirdly fantasizes about her and then tries some human food. Keefe feels bad about his legacy and his mommy issues. He tries to find out something about a loose end (and never does)… and tries some human food. It goes on and on. If I hadn’t been waiting two years for the next installment of the series, maybe I would’ve been able to enjoy it more. Instead, I was left disappointed with the amount of information revealed and the goals accomplished. Even the rewrite of the famous Chapter 42 from Keefe’s POV was kind of useless. I’m sure these last few books of the series will be beloved by newer readers who get to experience everything at once when the series is finished – but Shannon’s original readers have kind of been left in the lurch with the way she’s handling the wrap-up of KOTLC. We’ve had to wait years and years in between releases, so simple slice-of-life “0.5” books with little plot have just become annoying.
It’s been a loooong time since I’ve reread the Keeper series – which I used to do every year around the release of the next book. Picking up Unraveled felt like a rude awakening when it comes to Shannon’s writing style – I could suddenly understand all of the criticism from older readers after taking such a long break from the series. Her work is ridiculously dialogue and thought heavy, almost completely driven by it. It makes sense with her background in film, but she really needs a new editor. If a character spoke, they spoke in giant paragraphs of text. If no one was speaking, each sentence was two words long and its own new line. The whole book felt like one of her prefaces – very vague, almost poetic pages of dramatic character thoughts. The pacing felt especially slow with only Keefe present for most of the book – with little inter-person dialogue to drive everything forward, Keefe ended up talking to himself a few times and thinking constantly. The introduction of a *certain character* back into the story kind of just felt like a way for Shannon to add more dialogue because that’s all she can do. It made me think back to other books and realize how much time everyone spends discussing stuff rather than doing it. Even fight scenes are bogged down by constant monologuing. It’s definitely something you can get past and it serves to develop characters very strongly (one of the best parts of the series) but Unraveled especially just kind of got on my nerves. I don’t mean to insult Shannon though, I know how hard it can be to write and she usually does a great job. Jumping back into the unique Keeper style after for so long – which is not even aimed at my demographic anymore – just took a little getting used to.
As usual, the best of Shannon’s work was the characters. I would say Unraveled is worth reading mainly for the character development that Keefe goes through. He made a lot of progress in accepting his role in his mother’s plans, his new abilities, and working through his trauma. It was a lot of internal thought and personal reflection. In fact, every character that shows up exhibits some kind of growth – Lord Cassius helps and even jokes with his son, for example. It definitely filled the gap between the Keefe of Unlocked and the Keefe of Stellarlune.
However, this Keefe also acted a lot more immature than I remember. He’s supposed to be 17, but has been getting more and more whiny and sulky as time goes on. One of the things I liked about Keefe over Fitz was how he had the capability to joke through trauma rather than push everyone away and act grumpy. Now, the whole premise of this book is that Keefe has pushed everyone away and ran off the human world. Obviously he’s been through a lot, but even with all the emotional contemplation he did in Unraveled he still seemed to be putting on a show as soon as Sophie showed up to get him again. I just really wanted to see some actual maturity growth on top of ability-mastering growth.
While the lack of new information was annoying for a long-term reader, I did enjoy the cute human-world moments of Keefe trying new foods and visiting common touristy places, but I really missed his interactions with his friends. As I said, Shannon is an expert at the character piece of Keeper, and you could feel the absence of the main cast.
I’m trying to avoid spoilers in this review, but I will say that the surprise character who showed up was not only disappointing but their character was unrealistic. They didn’t really match their previous attitudes and behavior, and their interactions with Keefe were really strange for everything that had happened between them. It could just be more character development though.
I would have probably rated this book higher if I had not waited so long for more Keeper. I give it three stars, because of the lack of new information and focus on fan service. As a fun little side story it was definitely entertaining, but not necessarily the huge essential plot piece that Shannon made it out to be. I would recommend Unraveled if you’ve read the rest of the series. It just might be more enjoyable later on when the series is finished.
Content Warnings
I know that this has been over-mentioned in other people’s reviews so far, but I think it is important to discuss. There are three scenes that suddenly out of nowhere discuss gay people. A character offhandedly mentions his husband, a woman offhandedly mentions her wife, and in another scene, Keefe and the “surprise character” discuss how humans can sometimes be gay and how that’s “cool.” My problem is not necessarily with the gay people: though I am a Christian and believe that God intended marriage to be between a man and a woman, I also would not demonize a book for such a subtle inclusion as this. It is a fact of our world that there are gay people, and while I don’t think middle-grade readers need to be exposed to it, the inclusion itself is not that disappointing to me. It is the silly way she decided to include it that annoys me. Even people who support gay marriage and related topics could see that she shoved it in to satisfy the readers who complain about the lack of diversity in her series. The inclusion was random and unnecessary. The reason the Lost Cities do not have gay people is because their entire marriage system is based on genetic compatibility. Because two men cannot have children together, they would not be ruled a match. The matching system has been criticized by characters in Keeper constantly, but never once because it prevents gay marriage. Not a single character has ever mentioned being gay or wanting to be with someone of their gender. Now suddenly, when Keefe is exposed to it in the human world, he thinks it’s “cool?” Even if I thought it was a good, moral, thing, Keefe would not react this way on his very first time being exposed to the concept. His whole idea of love and marriage would be turned around as it had never been before. He wouldn’t just be like, “That’s cool. Too bad you can’t be gay in the Lost Cities.” Like, what? If Shannon wanted there to be more diversity in the series, she should’ve thought about that earlier on instead of shoving it in in an almost disrespectful way. That is my big problem with it. Other than that, everything is the same age and maturity level as the previous books: the worst thing in here is mentions of violence.
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