It's been a long wait for the fourth Sir Apropos of Nothing book, and an even longer wait for me since by the time it came out last summer I was already neck-deep in Notable Books contenders. For the most part, I'd say that Pyramid Schemes stands well on its own, with only passing references to Apropos's earlier adventures, but the last act of the book will be best appreciated by those who started at the beginning.

After having wandered the world for longer than he ever expected to be alive, Apropos, now probably around forty years old by his best estimation, has arrived in the country of Rogyt. There, due to his ignorance of the law declaring that all first born sons of an enslaved race called the Shews must be killed at birth, he accidentally brings about the death of the boy destined to free them. Their god then appears to him in the desert and declares that Apropos must find a way to set them free instead. Aside from the Exodus, the tale that follows brings in elements of Ben Hur, the curse of the Mummy, the story of Cleopatra, and more.

In some ways, Apropos suffers from the same difficulty as Harry Flashman does: having declared himself a coward and a scoundrel, he does tend to spend an unusual amount of time doing heroic things. However, I think that the end result for Apropos works out better. Unlike Flashman, at his heart, Apropos really does care about other people. He may expect that he will let them down eventually, and his inclination to risk his own skin more than he has to for them may not go very far, but he doesn't want to abandon or disappoint them. It's just that he's as much of a skeptic about himself as about the rest of the world. He has believably matured through the years, which is necessary to make the reader accept the end of his story. If this is the end of his story. It's certainly the beginning of a new chapter in Apropos's life, but whether it's the end of his published "memoirs" or merely the set-up for the next installment is not apparent. Considering how long it took before David was able to get the rights back and publish even one more Apropos book for us, I don't know how high my hopes should be, but if there is more coming I'll be ordering as soon as the paperback's available. ( )