星のカービィ 大迷宮のトモダチを救え!の巻

As much as I've enjoyed the Kirby novels I think this is the first one that's left me a bit cold story-wise. Learning-wise it's still great, I'm at a point where I'm reading this series more or less fluently aside from looking up a word or two per page, though one of the characters in this volume has the quirk of saying certain words in katakana so it took a bit to realize he was saying actual Japanese words and not the usual kind of katakana words, but overall it's as approachable as ever.

What made this fall a bit flat for me though is the pacing. The book gets off to a pretty rapid start, Kirby and friends are recruited by Mahoroa (who is a villain from one of the games but I haven't played that one) to go find a friend who's trapped in some kind of mirror dimension. The opening chapters are pretty fun and almost feel like they're aiming for a sort of Kirby-themed version of Alice in Wonderland what with Kirby getting shrunk down and finding a door, but almost as soon as we're introduced to this world, we leave it pretty quick for a subplot that can best be described as "Kirby and friends do domestic counseling".

Basically Kirby finds another mirror back to the "real world" and ends up in the home of Clayshia and Erinu, two friends who live together (also from a game but they're explained well enough for those who haven't played it). Erinu explains that Clayshia's been really rude lately and not acting herself, and it just so happens that they've obtained one of these weird mirrors that's shown to have strange effects on people's mind, so naturally I'm thinking Clayshia's strange behavior is caused by this mirror. It turns out that possibility is never even mentioned and the real reason she's been so rude lately is because she really is kind of a pretentious and obsessive artist who really wants to be left alone to make her masterpiece. The whole subplot just feels disconnected from the main storyline, and while it does have some cute moments (including Kirby and Dedede's art being so bad that it inspires Clayshia to make something good), and the payoff gives Kirby and friends a powerup they need to succeed, it's really barely tied to the main plotline at all. The prior book about the big race had different subplots about each of the challenges and racers, but they all fed into the main story and led to the climax, whereas just felt like it killed the momentum.

The second half of the book doesn't hold up super well either. After Kirby and friends get done with Clashia and Erinu, they quite literally rocket to the climactic final battle which takes up the latter four of the book's eight chapters. While 4 whole chapters of slam-bang action might be exciting for some, I've never enjoyed reading protracted action scenes as written word in any language. There are a few developments here and there, but it's mostly about the big fight and without much plot or character development, you're really just reading about the team throwing different attacks that don't work until they do. I'd rather have more story, more character moments, and that's something the prior books have all done really well. The earlier action scenes were exciting, but to-the-point and each chapter in prior books built on the broader problem, whereas this feels like one big scene stretched for way too long.

Still, there are some fun bits and good jokes. I like the part where Dedede says Kirby's mind is like a pair of socks that hasn't been washed for a week, and the final scenes do have some interesting deeper character stuff, but it was a bit too little too late. I know if you're cranking out a ton of books they probably all can't be bangers and this isn't bad per se, but it just didn't have as much of what I liked about the earlier ones and it kind of became a slog (oh and also this is the first in the series to not have a scene with Chef Kawasaki, though he is at least mentioned).

Hopefully the next book gets its energy back, I've really enjoyed the first 5 and sitting down to re-play some of the early Kirby games has been really fun since I know most of the enemy names and who they are now.