Losing Latitude:Part Four by Cory Cramer

Review of Part One
Review of Part Two
Review of Part Three

I really enjoy rereading Ann Rice’s The Witching Hour over and over. But I rarely read the whole book. Instead I always skip to the middle, to the long, expansive Talamasca file on the History of the Mayfair witches. I don’t particularly like Rowan Mayfair and find her story to be interesting only because of the multitude of little connections between the history of the places and people that came before that she runs into and doesn’t even understand.

What does this have to do with part four of Losing Latitude by Cory Cramer? With this part the story is shaping up the same way.

Part four, The Last Place to Run, is almost entirely sections of Bucky McGee’s journal. Of course, in this installment they take a wild, suspenseful twist that still doesn’t explain the demon that’s been chasing him. But by the end of this section the tale is hard to put down, and leaves the reader with something akin to outrage. It simply cannot end there.

As for Lilly, the young adult who lost her parents to a shipwreck and became an unexpected millionaire, well, she has about as much “screen time” as her dead father in this part of the story. She’s not as unsympathetic of a character as I find Rowan Mayfair to be, but the focus so far is on the voice of Buck. This is partly because for the length of the tale so far Lilly has been in a naval hospital recovering from injuries received during the shipwreck that killed her parents. But it’s also because with her parents dead only the journal can drive the plot forward toward its resolution.

I do wonder how one more ninety five page installment can bring Lilly from her current position to solving the mystery that led her father to sail into the storm rather than away from it. But there has definitely been growth, not just of the story, but also of Cramer’s writing skills as the story has progressed. If he can clinch this tale, and continues to build his craft I could easily see his next stories published outside the sphere of self-publishing.