So it turns out I was wrong about which was the penultimate volume of the Ex Machina series. But, since the series is now over in monthly publication form, I can definitively state that Ring out the Old is next-to-last. Superficially, it has the same structure as all the books: Mayor Hundred addresses a political issue (environmentalism!) while at the same time a piece of the puzzle of his past and the mysterious powers he’s been granted is revealed. The big difference is that Vaughan finally noticed his story was nearly over and picked up the pace on the latter portion. I can’t help but wonder whether the pacing would look right if I read the series all as a piece, but at the same time, the series has been released piecemeal (in two different formats) over the past few years, so there’s only so much credit I could give to that possibility even if it were factual. It’s not that it was a bad story, but since I’ve spent all this time wondering what was going on only to see it all finally revealed in a chunk at the end, mainly I’ll be glad it’s over. I guess I had a journey fail, here.

Oh, but the initial story in the book before all that I just mentioned, about Hundred’s biographers? That was just shameless self-indulgence.