Omnibus Review: The Grimm Diaries Prequels 10.5-14.5

Release Date: June 27, 2013
Author: Cameron Jace
Publisher: Independently Published
Length: 146 pages
Source: Borrowed eBook

10.5) Happy Valentine’s Slay by Wee Willy Winkie The real Sandman Grimm sheds a light on what happened in Jawigi, and tells about how some of the teens in Sorrow spend their Valentine’s Day.

11) Children of Hamlin by the Devil The Devil tells the story of the Piper of Hamlin, who he really is, the historical events he witnessed, and his relationship to Ladle Rat. Most of all, why they call him the Black Death.

12) Tooth & Nail & Fairy Tale by Jack Madly Jack Madly stole a sack full of baby teeth from Bluebeard’s enchanted castle, which reminds him of when he first met the Tooth Fairy when he was a child; a memory he wishes to forget.

13) Ember in the Wind by the Little Match Girl All the Little Match Girl wants is to sell her matches so she uses the money to eat and find shelter from the cold. But no one in the cruel city of crowded London helps her. Eventually, she learns something about who she really is, and it changes her life forever.

14) Jar of Hearts by the Queen of Sorrow The Queen of Sorrow, still trapped in the Dreamworld summons Cassandra, the fortuneteller, to ask her about the identities of Lost Seven. The problem with Cassandra is that she’s cursed that her predictions will never be believed. The Queen is still determined to believe her, but it will cost more than she can bargain for.

14.5) Welcome to Sorrow, a bonus prequel

  

Reviews:

Happy Valentine's Slay: So this story was weird. It's told from the POV of Sandman Grimm... the REAL Sandman Grimm. However once we get some backstory on him, along with some really heavy handed foreshadowing he launches into a Valentine's Day story that features a lot of my favorite characters from this series. However, the third person point-of-view changes so much and the story goes on weird tangents so often that the story itself just sort of falls flat. The characters are great, and it's awesome to see them all interacting, it's just that things were kind of boring and with things moving around so often it took a while for the story to sort of meld into something enjoyable. However toward the end things really started to get interesting...

Rating:

So yeah, if this story was told differently or things had sort of come together quicker I may have enjoyed this story more, but in the end it just feels like a hodgepodge of random information that just sort of melts into a story by the end.

The Children of Hamlin: This story, in a sense, takes place right after the last one. It's told from the point of view of the Devil. In it he tells the story of the Piper, much the same as I've heard before, though with a few Grimm Diaries tweaks added here and there. The big thing though is how the Piper fits into the larger story and who he is, or will be, to Ladle. The story itself is richly described. I've come to terms with the voice of the Devil and that he won't be this purely evil being, and that he's more of this devilishly silly character. The way he tells this story adds a levity to the otherwise somber tale. And then at the end there is quite a bit of information that helps expand this world even further and points the origins of certain things.

Rating:

So for the most part I really liked this story it was a lot more entertaining and easier to keep up with than the previous prequel and it sort of combines the two types of prequels usually told, one more plot related and another that's a fun and twisted version of an old classic. My only point of contention is that there were just a few times when the story sort of lulled and the background information to the story felt a bit too heavy handed.

Tooth & Nail & Fairy Tale: So... this tale is probably the weirdest in this set so far. In this tale we find Jack who has just stolen a bag of baby teeth from Bluebeard, and then goes into a tale about how Jack sort of stumbles onto three children in a school about to go to the dentist's. In this tale Jack helps them escape the demonic dentist and in the process runs into the Tooth Fairy. It's, like I said, a rather strange tale but it does a lot to foreshadow and build up to some really cool things  The story and mythology itself is actually pretty entertaining. There are a few twists here and there that I really loved and I like how this world keeps growing and we learn the backstories of certain characters.

Rating:

So this is another one that was a lot of fun, but just sort of lagged in a few areas. Overall I enjoyed it, I just wasn't swept away by it.

Ember in the Wind: So the story of The Little Match Girl is a tragic one, there are endings in which the girl has a happy ending, but it's usually because she dies and goes to heaven. This story however is a bit different. Going into this story I didn't know what to expect, I knew it was a story in which this young match girl discovers her destiny but I did't know much beyond that. It doesn't take long however to figure out who she really is and what her role in everything might be. What I really loved though was that it never felt like the author was trying to hide her destiny or pretend that the heavy handed foreshadowing was just supposed to be a teaser for the big reveal. It just all sort of made sense. This story got me very excited for the main series and this character's role in it.

Rating:

I was utterly entranced by this tale. It's enthralling, entertaining, and has a bit of a somberness to it. You feel sorry for the main character until everything is revealed and then I got a bit jealous of her.

Jar of Hearts: This story takes place a bit after Jawigi and tells the story of how the Queen of Sorrow enlists Cassandra to tell her who the Lost Seven are. The trick with Cassandra though is that while her predictions are always accurate, albeit sometimes vague, anyone who asks the question will never believe the prediction. Now, while this story got off to a bit of a rocky start, I was anxious and excited to learn who the Lost Seven are. However, since this is a series that thrives on the idea of the unreliable narrator, it's impossible to know for sure who the Lost Seven are, regardless though by the end it is fairly clear who five of the Seven are, though two remain very vague and their descriptions could apply to more than one person. I found the infusion of Greek mythology very fun and the character of Cassandra is very entertaining. I love how the Queen continues her deceit and how you never quite know what's up her sleeves.

Rating:

So if it wasn't for the bumpy start I would have really loved this tale. It answers a few burning questions and leaves some things left to be pondered.

Welcome to Sorrow: So this isn't so much a story as it is an expositional vehicle to begin to finally introduce the main series. In this tale we are greeted bu Igor who shows us around Sorrow as it is now, no longer a medieval kingdom full of fairy-tales now it's more of a modern day small town full of fairy-tale characters who will soon wake up from their one hundred year sleep. In it we learn more about the town and the dark mystery it keeps hidden. As a bonus prequel it did well, but honestly I didn't really need a tour around Sorrow, it was a fun little side thing, but for the most part it was pretty boring. Toward the end things started to speed up but that was more so Igor could tease a little for the first main series story Snow White Sorrow.

Rating:

So yeah, there's nothing particularly special about this book, but it's not awful either, and since it was a bonus shorter prequel I'm not going to do too much complaining.

Book Review: Winter (The Lunar Chronicles #4)

Release Date: November 10, 2015
Author: Marissa Meyer
Publisher: Feiwel and Friends
Length: 827 pages
Source: Library Audio Book

Princess Winter is admired by the Lunar people for her grace and kindness, and despite the scars that mar her face, her beauty is said to be even more breathtaking than that of her stepmother, Queen Levana.

Winter despises her stepmother, and knows Levana won’t approve of her feelings for her childhood friend—the handsome palace guard, Jacin. But Winter isn’t as weak as Levana believes her to be and she’s been undermining her stepmother’s wishes for years. Together with the cyborg mechanic, Cinder, and her allies, Winter might even have the power to launch a revolution and win a war that’s been raging for far too long.

Can Cinder, Scarlet, Cress, and Winter defeat Levana and find their happily ever afters?

    

Review:

Protagonists: So with the introduction of this book there are SO MANY POVS, so instead of giving you a crazy run down I'll try to keep it short and sweet! First we have our ever resilient heroine Cinder, who has accepted who she is and is ready to not only begin a revolution but take her rightful place as Queen of Luna. Cinder is an amazing character, given the tragedies in her past she pushes forward to stop the injustices Levana has done to not only the people of Luna, but the people of Earth as well. Next have Winter, I loved Winter so much, She's a bit crazy from Lunar Sickness, not using her Lunar gift, but she's actually a lot sharper than she lets on. She doesn't let her mental illness stop her from doing good and helping others when she can. The rest of the protagonists are also still amazing, I love how diverse and different they are and how fleshed out and complex they either have become or become over the course of this book.

Romances: So there are a lot of romances in this book, and it took me until this book to really realize how undeveloped a lot of these romances really are. Unlike other YA novels each main romance wasn't solidified in one book where the characters are all dreaming about their futures by the very end of the book and have solid stable romances. In fact at the beginning of this book nobody is really quite sure where they stand with their love interests, except maybe Cinder and Kai, but there's that whole Levana engagement in their way so I count that too. Over the course of this book though there are great romantic scenes with each couple that strengthen their bonds without overshadowing the main story line.

World-Building: In this book we get our first real look at Luna, kind of, if you've read Fairest you also get a look at it there too, but there's a broad look at everything here as well. This book is all about Cinder's planned rebellion and bringing the fight with Levana to a head. This book is also, like the others, a fairy tale retelling. Even knowing that for some reason I didn't expect this book to be so on the nose with it's retelling of Snow White, I mean there aren't really seven dwarfs but still, I expected it to be more vague even symbolic in places, but I really enjoyed all the little Snow White plot points mixed with the main story and the sci-fi twists given to this classic tale.

Predictability: So I have to say I thought I knew what I was in for with this book, I knew there'd be some twists her and there maybe, but I was truly surprised with how many crazy and at times stressful twists there were. I have to say though I was disappointing by how one twist involving Wolf turned out. It was initially very tense and it felt like it was ramping up into something huge but kind of resolved itself before then. That being said though there were many times throughout this book that I was kind of in the dark about how things would turn out other than happily ever after... maybe.

Ending: So this book has a very large final confrontation, split up into stages. There is a final battle, but the real final climax involved members of our core group and Levana, I actually liked how it was handled, it was a very stressful climax and I wasn't quite sure how or if anyone would come out of it unscathed. There is a very long cooldown period after the climax, mainly because there are a lot of characters' story lines to wrap up. I didn't mind the long ending because I liked seeing how things turned out after the battle. I do have to say though it only felt really long when it came to the last section of the last chapter, I felt like the characters involved were tiptoeing around their words and being needlessly vague whereas an upfront conversation would have been much smoother. Did everything tie up neatly, not exactly and the ending isn't overly idealistic, but I will say that even though I do hope Meyer will write more sci-fi fairy tales set in this world, I don't have too many lingering questions.

Rating:

So I thought long and hard about this and while I loved this book and how it ended, and I'm sad to see this series that I love so much go, I was a bit disappointed with a few things so I can't quite give it five stars, nonetheless it's still a fantastic end to this epic series.