The Last Chance Hotel
The Seth Seppi series, Book 1
Nicki Thornton
Chicken House
Fiction, MG Fantasy/Mystery
*** (Okay)
DESCRIPTION: Young Seth has no memories of his mother and barely any of his father, once the chef of the remote Last Chance Hotel. People used to come from miles away to the lonely little place in the middle of the forbidding woods just to taste his food. When Dad disappeared, he left Seth behind. Now the boy toils as the dishwasher/cleaner/porter/general lowly servant of the nasty Bunn family who runs the Last Chance. The worst of them is their mean daughter Tiffany, who constantly reminds Seth that he'll never be the famous chef his father was, and he'll never escape the Last Chance Hotel. If it weren't for the grungy old black cat Nightshade, he'd have no friends at all in this desolate place.
When a group of important guests arrives, each more peculiar than the last, Seth sees hope in the illustrious Doctor Thallomius, who treats the boy well despite his lowly status. Maybe, just maybe, Seth has found an ally, someone who could help him escape the Bunns and a future of drudgery. When Thallomius dies at dinner - poisoned, it seems, by the dessert Seth made especially for him - he instead finds himself accused of murder. But the food was fine when it left the kitchen; he tasted it himself. Along with his cat Nightshade, he'll have to figure out who the real killer is if he hopes to clear his name. But things become complicated when he realizes that the guests at the Last Chance aren't just peculiar. They're each magicians, with real magic, and each of them has their own reasons to have wanted Thallomius dead.
REVIEW: The Last Chance Hotel starts with plenty of promise and a decent enough premise, as well as a young protagonist who, right out of the gate, has an interesting gift in his culinary sense and sensitive nose. The nasty Bunns are a too-familiar cliche, particularly the girl Tiffany whose sole motiviation is "big meanie bullying Seth" (the sort of shallow characterizations even picture books have been known to rise above, let alone a full-length story pitched at the lower end of middle grade), but I figured things would flesh out as the story progressed and the worldbuilding unfolded. Unfortunately, the story remained flat and thin throughout.
Seth starts out a downtrodden boy who nevertheless dreams of living up to his father's legacy and restoring the Last Chance Hotel's kitchen to its former reputation... yet his every action is preceded by pages worth of hesitation and cowardice and general indecisive, repetitive dithering. It's unclear how the Bunns came to be his guardians, and it's equally unclear why Tiffany is such an insufferable monster to him... matters which (risking spoilers, here) are hardly clarified at all throughout the entire book. It doesn't help that Seth is an utter blockhead of a protagonist. Not long after the accusation of murder, his cat Nightshade starts talking to him, yet it still takes him several long and tedious chapters to finally clue in to the existence of magic and the magical community. To repeat: His. Cat. Is. Talking. To. Him. Is this not a massive clue, not only to the existence of magic but secrets in the hotel? Apparently not. Seth is the sort of character who needs things explained multiple times before they begin to percolate through his cranium, and even then he tends to backslide and fail to connect dots as he repeats information to himself. (Even then, he has to be reminded of things he actually experienced at more than one point.) It doesn't help that the worldbuilding here is all over the map. The Last Chance Hotel is the sort of place with little to no sign of modern technology, seeming to exist in a nebulous sort-of past where nobody really expects a remote location to have so much as a phone, let alone television or computers or a cell phone signal, the sort of world where a fading magical community can exist even as it fades into obscurity... yet at one point Seth brightly compares a magical artifact to "virtual reality". Huh? Where would Seth have even heard about virtual reality, and how can a world with virtual reality - and associated technology, which would almost have to include some sort of recording devices - forget that magic is a thing? I struggled to really care about such a nebulously sketched world and such a deliberately clueless boy... or, frankly, any of the people surrounding him. (Yes, unfortunately, that includes the cat Nightshade.) Things happen to Seth more often than he actively acts to clear his own name, characters behave suspiciously or ridiculously (often both), Tiffany behaves cruelly because she's a half-note character (not even a one-note character) who makes Veruca Salt from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory seem complex and nuanced, and somehow things work out while leaving threads dangling for future books.
There are some promising ideas and nicely described moments now and again. Seth had potential to be interesting, as did the setting. I did want to enjoy the story. I just couldn't really connect with anyone, or the world the story tried to build.
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