For all his...zaniness and unique storytelling, Fforde himself has become decidedly predictable within his own stories. I could feel the plot-beats in The Last Dragonslayer and came to expect the things that would happen at particular points.

Not a bad thing, but so much of what makes Fforde ffun is the unexpectedness of his writing. Granted, this is YA so he might have tried to turn it normaler (or not), but reading it felt like I'd read it before. Not...exactly, but between the writing tics (e.g. his car model descriptors assume a vehicular familiarity that I entirely lack), the overarching structure and the simple fact that he spends less time actually building the weirdness of the world in this book (and that's always been his finest work), I didn't find it exciting. A perfectly good read, sure. But not brilliant and I miss Fforde when he's not being brilliant.

(Shades of Grey 2, dammit!)