I liked the introduction of a 3rd person to the correspondence, it added sorely needed tension to the story. But I didn't like the ending. I guess we're supposed to guess what happened because of the picture on the last postcard, but a name change would have been nice to confirm it.

I've always like writing physical letters and sending/collecting postcards, kind of sad to see them go away, but instantaneous communication around the world is kinda nice too. ( )

The end of the trilogy moves along more calm and mellow,
still with beautiful illustrations and another slow plot,
now involving a mysterious and unnecessary villain. ( )

I'm reviewing these two together because I read them totally out of order. leaving me with little idea of story quality. I'd read Griffin and Sabine years ago and loved it - the artwork, the interactivity of it, and the way it ended mysteriously. A couple of years ago I acquired these two books at a sale and put them away until I could get the missing three, and read them in order.

Except last night I was in the mood for books with pieces, so I grabbed them to read anyway.

Definitely not a series to read out of order. The Golden Mean was ok - I figured out enough from having read the first book to follow along fine, but Alexandria has new characters that were somehow involved in everything and I was more than a little clueless, although I was left with the feeling that Bantock was reaching for plot by the end.

Regardless, the art is still stunning. I love the postcards and whenever a 'real' letter appeared on the page, the thrill of opening it, extracting the letter and reading it, never got old.

I'm still going to search out the rest of the books; if I ever find them, I'll read the whole series again - in order - and see if the plot goes as off the rails as it looks to me now. ( )

The Golden Mean; in Which the Extraordinary Correspondence of Griffin & Sabine Concludes. Nick Bantock. 1993. The art work in this book is just as eccentric and whimsical as it was in the previous books in this series, but the rest of it is a big nothing. Skip it. ( )

Summed up on the cover, The Golden Mean "in which the extraordinary correspondence of Griffin & Sabine concludes". Beautiful illustrations, a mystical relationship (or is it insanity?) and a teasing ending to the letters of Griffin and Sabine from England to the Simcom Islands. An unusual romance. ( )