THE END OF THE TRILOGY
The title ‘The Hundredth Door’ refers to the concept that we come into life through one door but may leave through any of a hundred, of which we have no fore-knowledge and over which we have no control.
The wonderfully intricate plot holds a hidden, fateful villain, a large cast of well-defined, diverse characters, a range of places and people nailed down with economic precision, sudden dramatic scenes and erupting, blinding violence and tiny details hooked to huge truths.
Storms rage through ‘The Hundredth Door’ - at sea in vast-waving, wind-whipped gales and in snow-drowned, tempest-battered mountains. Safe ground suddenly disappears in the Running Wolf mist, where land and sea can be terrifyingly indistinguishable.
A central theme of the book, as in the previous two, is the dual nature of nationalism. This can be a positive, binding force for people, as we see in the delight and pride the travelling players evoke in their audiences when they remind them of their national culture—re-enacting and adapting stories from Hans Christian Andersen for Danish gatherings—but also a power for implacable hate that leads to the death of innocent lives.
