However, it did infuriate, which is why I kept my copy in time out all last night after finishing. It needed to think about what it had done to me.
And stay there.
So in this installment, we catch up with Alex and Conner, now fourteen, and their respective lives. Conner's in our world, about to take a trip to Germany for the revealing of three new stories from the Brothers Grimm. The stories had been locked in a time capsule with explicit instructions for them not to be read until two hundred years had passed.
Alex is still in Fairy Godmother training and facing all sorts of unintended consequences that come from overeager magic use. She did meet a cute boy out of all of this, at least - Rook Robins, son of an Eastern Kingdom farmer. Still, Alex soldiers on with her training, celebrating her Fairy Inaugural Ball after a year's worth of lessons. She's now officially the next Fairy Godmother.
It didn't happen a moment too soon.
See, at the story reading, Conner heard two stories that were very familiar to him - The Curvy Tree and the Walking Fish. He knows the Brothers Grimm knew about the Land of Stories. The third story, however, is the dangerous one. It tells of an army that was sent through a portal to a magical land in the hopes of conquering it for themselves. The portal was designed to capture them for two hundred years, though, so hopefully something could be done about them before they even arrived - and something had: the Fairy Godmother closed all the portals last year after Alex and Conner defeated Ezmia.
But the portal has been re-opened.
The Fairy Godmother is dying now that she has an heir, and her magic is dying along with her. The portals are now re-opening, and no one in the Land of Stories knows about the army. (Well, Mother Goose does, but she's got her own reasons for wanting that to be a secret.) Conner knows he has to warn Alex and his friends there, but Alex isn't answering her magic mirror. He and his friend/crush Bree embark on a journey throughout Europe to get them to the portal, arriving right after the army does.
Alex and Conner quickly collect their familiar friends and enact a battle plan, making unlikely alliances, training the most improbable of soldiers, and hoping beyond hope that their grandmother will wake up one last time and help them defeat their most pressing foe: a dragon.
The Masked Man controlling the dragon is also a concern for the twins. Who is he? What does he want? Most importantly, why does he look so familiar?
If you're anything like me, you'll want to chuck this novel across your house once you reach the ending of The Land of Stories: A Grimm Warning.
Minus my all-consuming rage, though, this was a spectacular novel. Conner is as funny as ever, Red's strange combination of self-absorption and genuine care is at an all time high, and the new characters are just as fun to read about as the old. I especially like Bree and Emmerich, Conner's new buddies from our world.
I'm not feeling Alex's crush, Rook, however. He starts off just fine, but his decisions near the end of the novel are a dealbreaker for both me and Alex herself, and I really like that she absolutely refuses to take him back after what he's done. (His actions are understandable, but not particularly forgiveable, and Alex realizes that, too.) He makes the typical claim to win her back somehow, but that'll be a matter for book four. Personally, I hope he doesn't, at least not the way he is right now. He's not good enough for her.
My favorite thing about this book was the tying together of real world events and magical explanations. The reasoning behind Neuschwanstein Castle made me smile with glee (no pun intended) and the enchanted South Bank Lion was so adorably perfect. Any novel that combines the mundane with the magical always entrances me, but it's apparent that some real care went into the choices behind TLOS3's magic, and I love it.
Now, who wants to yell about that ending with me? I need TLOS4, like, yesterday.
Five stars.
No comments:
Post a Comment