Jones, Diana Wynne - The Merlin Conspiracy

This is set in the same universe as Deep Secret, though you don't need to read one to read the other.

Roddy, a member of the Royal Progress of the Isle of Blest (sort of like a royal court on a bus), ends up discovering that there's a giant conspiracy in place involving the Merlin, who's supposed to keep the magic of Blest balanced. Nick Mallory from Deep Secret manages to wander off into a parallel world, gets himself into all sorts of trouble, and generally gets tangled up in Roddy's business. Roddy manages to collect several extremely annoying relatives, while Nick manages to encounter an extremely polite elephant, a powerful magician, and a goat.

The plot doesn't feel like a plot that moves forward; instead, Jones takes assorted incidents that seem random and ties them all together in the end. Sometimes I enjoy it when she does this. This time, I felt like I wasn't interested in the book until halfway through, when things were finally starting to coalesce a bit. Jones includes her trademark horrible relatives; coffeeandink mentions that there are several cases in which children manipulate people, and the adults are sometimes just as bad.

I'm not quite sure what to say about this one. I liked the elephant and Nick and Roddy finally meeting, but something felt missing. I was never quite interested in Nick or Roddy's plight, and I never felt as though the world was threatened, even though there are supposed to be universally horribly consequences to the scheme that Roddy discovers.

Links:
- coffeeandink's review

ETA: some spoilers in the comments