Third Time's the Charm?

Finally finished the third Howl's Moving Castle! and only a day after it was due :) (after nine weeks out, mind you) - this was quite an endeavor in the end... well actually it wasn't.  Children's books are just pretty easy reading, not least when they come around after the last book I read (see here and here).  And the other two books were pretty good (see here and here).  This one was... well just not quite up to par.  It could have been just my mood, or the contrast with Suite Francaise... but I think it was just lacking in a lot of what made the other two good.
First of all, it was about a much younger set - or at least they seemed much younger.  No romance, and no pretense of any romance either.  And the story didn't have that same tongue in cheek feeling the other two almost had.  And you know how I said the other two had this kind of adult humor? Well this one... not so much.  I mean it was cute, but it was a utterly a children's book.   A good, well written, creative one, but strictly for children (that's a review I read for Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, which I find pretty apt).  The one interesting element was that it was actually pretty dark - featured a monster that implanted its eggs into humans, which killed them when the human-monster offspring were born... and those human monster offspring were then evil for generations... pretty dark stuff...and with a lot of potential unintentional metaphors too :)
But basically, yeah, not much to say about it.  Fun enough, but not required reading :)

Verdict: 2.5/5
Food: strictly children's treat... fruit roll up comes to mind (can you believe huvi has belittled my food rating system? i know, i couldn't either :))