Lost in Rooville

June 13, 2005
In the final installment of his Flabbergasted trilogy, Blackston takes his characters on an Australian adventure. In Flabbergasted
, Blackston's narrative techniques were fresh, but here they feel warmed over. For example, when Jay, the narrator, and his best friend, Steve, spend 40 pages exchanging witty repartee about their impending marriage proposals, the conversation quickly wears thin. Blackston goes for erudite insouciance in virtually all his main characters (so carefree are they that they complain about their ruined shoes as they're sinking in quicksand). Unfortunately, most everything—the narration, the dialogue, the distracting metaphors—is overwritten. To his credit, Blackston sustains a reasonably interesting plot, especially in the first half, when two of his main characters are in danger. His description of their struggles has the feel of a solid adventure novel. While there are a few interesting moments after this crisis is resolved, the novel is compromised by an ending that readers will have seen coming. With many oblique references to events and characters in the other novels, this book is likely to appeal only to existing fans of the trilogy.

Andrew Peterson tries hard--at least 75% of the time--to spur along the action of this "lost in the wilderness adventure," set in the Australian Outback. But even the attractiveness of the hero and heroine, two 20-something love-struck but unbelievably chaste American missionaries, can't pull the saga out of endless hours of stuck-in-the-red-mud boredom. Peterson gathers speed as the couple, after numerous attempts, almost die trying to find a way out, but when the rescue finally comes, the narrator, as well as the listener, stumbles into disbelief over the deus ex machina improbability of it all. M.T.B. 2006 Audie Award Finalist (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine