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Product Details
- Title: The Grimm Chronicles: Volume 2
- Authors: Ken Brosky and Isabella Fontaine
- File Size: 1072 KB
- Print Length: 545 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1481897810
- Publisher: Brew City Press; First edition (February 15, 2013)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00BGIL4U0
- FTC FYI: I was given a review e-copy in exchange for an honest review.
Book Description:
200 years ago, the Brothers Grimm changed everything.
With the help of a little magic, fairy tales were made real, manifesting all over the world. Charming princes. Gold-hunting dwarfs. Terrible step-mothers. Heroic animals.
Then, slowly, they began to change. Everyone—from Prince Charming to the old miller—grew more evil. Corrupted. A hero was chosen to stop them, hunting them down one by one and destroying them with the help of a magic pen and a special rabbit assistant.
For 200 years, the hero’s magic pen has been passed on from generation to generation. The newest hero is Alice Goodenough, an 18-year-old junior from Washington High School. While her friends spent their summer working and having fun, Alice found herself doing battle with creatures most human beings don’t even realize exist. A giant snake. A blood-sucking prince. A terrifying half-man, half-hedgehog. Dastardly dwarfs intent on mind-controlling everyone who uses a cell phone.
Now, senior year has begun. With it comes a new challenge at school, where bullies have grown bolder and classes more challenging. As if that’s not enough, Alice must face off against a collection of Corrupted who all share a terrible secret, one that might awaken a creature capable of doing untold damage. To uncover the secret, Alice will have to face off against a man-eating lizard, a bloodthirsty sea captain, and a mysterious wizard who can see into the future …
This book contains:
Episode four: The Orphanage of Doom
Episode five: Blood and Thunder
Episode six: The Order of the Golden Dragon
Bonus material:
The Lost Journal of Eugene Washington
Assorted fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm
A Legacy of Red
My Review:
I loved this second volume of The Grimm Chronicles. With the background story already established, the story seemed to flow even better than in the first volume. The mystery that Alice and Briar set out to solve makes for a lot of action and excitement. I especially loved how the authors brought in the story from Alice in Wonderland, even though it is not a Grimm story. It all seemed very fitting for the Alice in this novel.
Again, I feel that this series is written for for older teens and adults. I've had to tell several people that this is NOT a book for children just because they read the title and think fairy tales are for kids.
I love the characters, I love the story lines, and I love Briar Rabbit. If you like the darker Grimm Fairy tales, you will love The Grimm Chronicles. I suggest that you read Volume 1 before reading volume 2 or you may be a little confused. I'm kind of anal about reading books/series in the right order. Enjoy reading the excerpt, and make sure you enter the giveaway for your chance to win an e-copy of this book.
Excerpt:
I
turned back to the room Alex had slipped into, feeling myself lift off
the ground as I became distracted, forgetting about thinking about my
feet on the floor. I grabbed the frame of the doorway before I could
float back down the hall, then regained my bearings and walked inside.
It
was the living room. The one with the old dark drapes and the old
couch. There was a bearskin run sitting on the floor in front of the
couch—I hadn’t noticed it before but now I found myself stepping
sideways to put space between myself and the bear’s terrifying head,
frozen in a look of absolute hunger.
The
boy was hiding behind the couch, peering around the edge and watching
me walk over. In the delicate silence, I could hear the sound of my feet
on the hardwood floor, muffled by my socks.
My
socks. Last night, I’d taken off my socks before going to sleep.
Tonight, I was wearing socks. Whatever ghostly creature I was, I was
probably wearing exactly what I wore to bed.
Which meant the ghost standing before Alex was wearing an old teddy bear t-shirt and Hunger Games pajama bottoms. Oy. Some savior.
Thankfully, he didn’t look too disappointed.
He was crouched over, his fingers clutching the couch so tightly his
little knuckles had turned white. Above us, the ceiling creaked. A door
opened, then slammed shut.
“She’ll come back down,” he said in a low voice. “I can’t fight back. I’m so tired. I think they put something in the porridge.”
Carbs,
I thought. They loaded it with carbohydrates so the kids got a quick
sugar rush. Then the rush wears off and they crash and go to bed. They
start it all over again the next day. No protein or fat in their diets
would make them groggy and unable to gain much strength to fight back.
Thank you, health class.
“Are you a ghost?”
I shook my head. I tried to talk again, but my voice was silent.
“Here,” he said, reaching into the pocket of his overalls. He pulled out a small chunk of coal. “Can you grab this?”
I could try. I reached out, but nothing happened.
Think about grabbing it, Alice!
I reached out again, imagining my invisible hand grabbing the coal. It floated in mid-air; the boy smiled.
“Cool.”
I moved the coal to the floor, writing a simple message:
What’s in the basement?
The boy nodded, understanding. “They have us digging for something.
Well, they have us and something else digging for something. Some of us
sew clothes, too, and the mistresses sell the clothes for money to keep
buying more coal. Some of us have to keep the furnaces going. It’s
really hot.”
“Why?” I wrote.
The boy shrugged. “Because the creature likes it hot.” He swallowed, taking a shaky breath. “The younger one is named Marleen.”
Marleen! Of course. It made sense: Marleen was the daughter in “The Juniper Tree.”
The sound of heavy shoes pounding on the stairs caused us both to
flinch. I dropped the coal. The boy quickly used his hand to wipe away
the words, putting the lump of coal back in his pocket.
“Will you save us?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Are you going to do it wearing pajamas?”
I smiled and shook my head.
A
look of relief spread across his little face. “The creature …” he
started to say, but then his big doe eyes glanced over the couch and a
look of terror spread across his face. A pair of long, slender hands
reached over and grabbed him by his overalls, pulling him over the
couch.
“Come
along now, my little darling,” said the sweet-sounding Marleen, tucking
him under her arm as if he was a football. I tried to follow and felt
my feet lift off the ground. I reached out, trying to grab Alex’s hand.
But I was floating now, unable to control myself.
“Let go!” Alex shouted, pounding on her back.
Marleen laughed. “Such a strong little boy! Why, two extra hours
shoveling coal will be a walk in the park! And if you collapse, all the
better! I’m starving and I haven’t had a good leg of child in years.”
The boy screamed louder. I was falling behind, trailing them in the dim hallway.
“Oh, hush,” said Marleen. “I would never, never do such a thing to you.
You remind me too much of my dear brother. It was all my fault, you
know. I killed him. From that moment on, it was only a matter of time
before Death returned to claim him.” She stifled a sob, reaching for the
heavy door near the kitchen. “Oh my dear, dear brother. The guilt tears
at me so. I fear it will consume me if we don’t find him again!”
I
planted my invisible feet on the carpet and stepped quickly, losing my
footing again and again. By the time I reached the door to the basement,
it was already shut.
And locked.
“But I’m a ghost,” I said in a mute voice. I thought about moving through the door, closing my eyes as I drifted closer. When I opened them again, I found myself in a dark staircase leading down.
Behind me, the door was still shut.
From
farther below came the unmistakable sound of Alex’s cries. I willed my
feet to touch the steps and take them two at a time, down one landing
and then another, where the wooden steps gave way to stones and the
wooden walls of the staircase turned to rock. There was no basement,
only another winding staircase leading deeper. The air cooled. The
noxious scent of burning coal entered my nostrils.
Alex
screamed again. I fought to catch up, tripping on the stone steps in
the near-darkness. The only sources of light were three small lanterns
hanging from the stone walls, and as I passed the last one I found
myself surrounded by darkness, carefully plotting my footsteps on the
wet stone floor as my invisible fingers followed the rocky wall. I
turned right and suddenly, there was light at the end of the tunnel.
Literally.
I gasped. It was a cavern. A massive cavern with massive iron furnaces
on either side with long exhaust pipes crawling up the walls and
disappearing into the rocky ceiling. Children lurched from massive piles
of black stuff over to the furnaces with heavy shovels full of coal.
With every fresh load of coal, the fires inside each furnace belched in
satisfaction. The wet rock walls glistened in the firelight.
More
kids sat at tables spread out near the entrance to the tunnel, hunched
over stacks of jeans, sewing as furiously as their little fingers would
allow. Boys, girls, all of them incredibly young, all of them dirty and
disheveled and tired-looking. Their eyes blinked furiously in the hot,
dry air. On every pair of jeans was a gold “B.”
“Faster
now!” said the older Corrupted woman with the gray hair. She was
walking between the rows of tables. “Jeans mean money. And money means
coal.”
But
for what? I thought. Was it to build the furnaces? How long had it
taken to build each one? Why were there so few farther down the cavern?
Five of the boys farther down the cavern, tossing another load of coal into the hot furnaces, and the entire cavern brightened.
There,
on the other end of the cavern: a lizard. A massive lizard the size of a
truck, clawing madly at the walls, tearing away chunks of rock.
I gasped.
The lizard turned, causing the kids to drop their shovels and run back
toward the tables. The lizard had bright brown and black spots, like
someone had splattered it with paint. It had a fat tail and a wide,
spade-shaped head. Its long red tongue jutted out, tasting the air. One
of its black eyelids blinked. More shovels full of coal fed the furnaces
along the walls and in the brief moment when the fires grew brighter, I
could see the creature’s pupil plain as day. A terrible realization
crept over me.
It could see me.
This book contains the first 3 episodes of the critically acclaimed series:
Episode 1: Prince Charming Must Die!
Episode 2: Happily Never After
Episode 3: Revenge of the Castle Cats
The Grimm Chronicles is intended for Young Adults aged 13 and up. The goal is to provide Young Adult readers with a strong, charismatic young woman in the role of the hero and provide readers with a positive protagonist who uses her brain to overcome obstacles life throws in her way.
Praise
“5 stars!” ~ Bookies Book Blog
"Highly recommended for all who love fairy tales and the YA genre." ~ My Cozie Corner
"All in all the books were excellent." ~ LilyElement
"If you love fairy tales and them being turned into modern day stories you will love these short stories." ~ Mom With a Kindle
5 stars (out of 5) ~ I Am, Indeed
“Isabella Fontaine and Ken Brosky’s incredible talent for storytelling takes the reader on an amazing action-packed ride fueled by endless creativity and limitless imagination. TGC is like a high-stakes version of Harold and the Purple Crayon meets a contemporary, above ground Alice in Wonderland. “ ~ Bookfetish
“I absolutely loved this book! No, let me rephrase that, I FREAKING LOVE THIS BOOK! Nope, that doesn't even do it justice. Vol. 1 has the first three stories from the 12 that will ultimately make up the chronicles.” ~ Jesse Kimmel-Freeman
Purchase:
About the Authors
Ken Brosky received his MFA in fiction writing from the University of Nebraska-Omaha. He also teaches English at Madison College. This is his first Young Adult series.
Isabella Fontaine owns a farm in Wisconsin and enjoys reading weird books like House of Leaves. This is her first Young Adult series.
Tour Giveaway
5 Kindle ebook copies of The Grimm Chronicles Volume 2
Ends 4/11/13
a Rafflecopter giveaway
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