星のカービィ大盗賊ドロッチェ団あらわる! の巻

The third Kirby novel switches things up a bit, having more of a straightforward adventure and mystery feel than the "sitcom that turns into an adventure" setup the first two did. Kirby and Waddle Dee meet a mysterious bird who asks them to protect her egg, and I was expecting it to turn into a Kirby version of that Spongebob episode where they have to raise the baby clam, but it's actually more of a cat and (literal) mouse game as a group of mouse thieves try to take the egg for themselves. The mouse characters are from the Squeak Squad DS game which I haven't played, but the book treats them as new characters Kirby encounters for the first time, so you don't have to worry if you haven't played the specific game the story draws from, which I think has been a strength of these novels as I haven't played a ton of Kirby but I haven't felt lost with any of these books.

The plot does some fun things like switching up who's on who's side a bit and the mystery around the egg did keep me guessing what the deal was until the end. There is a bit of the "this plot would be over if they would just talk to each other" going on, but the incidents that interrupt things are funny and it's not as annoying here as in, say, a CW show. That said, the part near the end where they're about to explain everything and suddenly the gang gets jumped by a random clown is hilarious but also kinda made me go "okay, now you're just messing with me", though it does lead to some fun moments and the clown is a memorable character in the few scenes he has.

Reading-wise this was the easiest of the three Kirby novels for me so far, and probably the smoothest time I've had with a prose book in general. It doesn't introduce any characters who speak in a weird or unique way and generally sticks to pretty default language. The words I did have to look up were generally Onomatopoeias. I was actually kind of caught off guard by how easy this volume felt and the ending brought it all together in a fun way.