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Król Wyrmów (2010)

by Holly Black(Favorite Author)

3.83 of 5 Votes: 2

languge

English

genre

Paranormal Fantasy

publisher

Egmont

series

Die Spiderwick Geheimnisse

review 1: *sigh* Where to begin?...Well, this is the third and final installment of this bizarre little spin-off series, and unfortunately, the best thing that can be said about the whole affair is that at least it's a quick read. As I feared, this book made the second one entirely unnecessary. I guess a series of two books seems pretty flimsy, but to stretch the "plot" out across three books makes it even more obviously weak. A good portion of the book is spent totally undoing everything that was the entire point of the second book, and the happenings of the first one are almost forgotten. This book and series is really trying to get some kind of scope and feeling of real danger across, but it just doesn't work. The writing is bland, the characters even more so, and the story... more is embarrassingly puerile. So many plot elements just didn't make sense. I'm kind of amazed that certain (even promising!) characters appeared for literally about 20 pages throughout the entire series, and then just left the story without any decent explanation. Nick is still unpleasant, though there are attempts at his redemption, and his transformation as a character is still abrupt and pretty unconvincing. Laurie still comes across as a weaksauce Luna Lovegood copy with a fraction of the personality or memorability. Just because someone wears odd clothes and you say she's quirky doesn't mean she is--You have to show that she is. It seemed like they really wanted to cram a lot of stuff in here, so they finally had a LOT of action, and the whole thing is hurried and spread really thin across too many characters and too many events. Really, they should have spread the events of this one across two books and skipped almost all of what happened in book 2. I also just don't think the Grace kids needed to be involved at all, except maybe as a brief cameo, a subtle wink to fans of the first series, but I guess there's not much subtlety involved in this book.And yes, the issues of divorce and mixed family are a little more prevalent here: Indeed, the first scene lands the family of five smack-dab in the middle of a hippie psychologist's office (located in her garage--how... charming?), where we are witness to an overlong and ineffective session of family therapy. Why is it that both the core trios of kids in the Spiderwick series come from broken families? It seems kind of like easy drama and angst, automatically built in, and therefore feels kind of like lazy writing. In the end, they basically hug and decide to, y'know, try and stuff. Personal growth was hastily thrown in at the end, and didn't really convince me.I would give this 1 1/2 stars, if half-star ratings were allowed, since it IS a little better than the second one, and it DOES have a little bit more direction, but it's still just a sort of shameless attempt at capitalizing on the young fantasy genre. I liked a very few things about this book. Their take on giants, mermaids and dragons is pretty unique, but is unfortunately used to little effect in the end. The design is still pretty cool, but the illustrations have sadly declined in quality and interest from those in the first book. The kids look different ages every time they appear, they don't dress like kids really do, and WHY do Julian and Mallory have the same haircut?On the back cover are splashed in large, unmistakable lettering the words: "IT'S OVER!!!" Let's hope so.
review 2: In The Wyrm King, book 3 of Beyond The Spiderwick, I like the way the author retells the story by allowing the reader to remember what was left off from book 2. He allows the reader to relieve the conflict between Nicolas Vargas and his psycho step-sister and her thoughts of a magical place. From giants coming out of the ground suddenly, to mermaids playing with Nicolas‘s mind, to a small dragon that grows into a giant dragon connected by its tales, all part of this magical adventure that makes your imagination go wild once again. I liked the way the author brought back the original characters from the Spiderwick chronicles. They always seem to be there for Nicholas and his step sister rescuing them on every step. As in when the step sister goes to a book fair and meets Jacob and Simon Spiderwick, the original characters, to talk about how to defeat the dragons and how to protect the world from ending. At this time in the series, Nicolas has seen it all and believes that his step sister is not as crazy has he once thought. He becomes part of her reality and finally sees there is an actual magical place where once he was a no body, but now is someone that everyone respects and looks after.I rate this book a 7 out of 10 because of the way the author allows the reader to keep the story together to all the previous books but not higher because the author was not as descriptive as he was in the previous boos. Overall is a series that I recommend to all young readers that are looking for a nice fictional book to read. less

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