200 years ago, the Brothers Grimm unleashed their stories upon the world. Literally. Now the characters of the Grimms’ stories walk among us. With every day that passes, they grow more evil. They are the Corrupted, and only a hero can stop them.
For 18-year-old Alice Goodenough, that means taking precious time off from her summer vacation. In addition to volunteering at the local library, Alice must stop the Corrupted who are now actively hunting her down. With the help of her magic pen and her trusty rabbit friend, the world has suddenly gotten a lot more complex. The Corrupted are everywhere, and only Alice can see them for what they truly are.
I’m a sucker for fairy tales so jumping head first into The Grimm Chronicles was a win-win for me. I really enjoyed the twists in each of the stories. The Grimm Chronicles is a fun romp into the classic Grimm stories we all love so much and to tell you the truth Fontaine does an amazing job breathing new life into them. So if you love the Brothers Grimm then you are sure to find all of the stories in this collection to your liking. What do you have to lose? Absolutely nothing but you will get to go on an adventure that will have you begging for more even after you turn the final page.
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
Additional features for this special edition:
– An introduction
– Two special “Lost Diaries”
– A behind-the-scenes interview
– A collection of original Grimms’ Fairy Tales
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.
What makes The Grimm Chronicles different from other YA books?
I don’t think we’re any better or worse than any other YA book. That’s up to readers to decide. And we certainly didn’t set out to try and make some radical changes to the YA genre.
What we did want to do was set some rules for our series. These would be our building blocks, things we could always go back to in order to make sure we were staying true to our themes. I think that’s important. So Alice, our hero, is going to develop both as the hero and as a human being. She’s going to undergo challenges. She’s going to fight a giant hedgehog monster, and then she’s also going to juggle friendships and school.
She’s also going to have to deal with the fact that she’s not a superhero. She’s smart, though. She can use her smarts to solve a lot of problems that her fists can’t.
So OK, we’ve got a story with a hero trying to fight off monsters, blah blah blah. How can we inject a little originality into it? What can we do different in order to make the series worth investing in? Well, how about Grimms’ Fairy Tales? And why focus entirely on the bad guys in the stories? Everyone always makes bad fairy tale characters bad and good fairy tale characters good. Let’s make them all turn evil. Corrupted.
What would Prince Charming be like if he turned evil? What about Tom Thumb?
Well, we decided, Prince Charming would probably get pretty mean as he becomes more Corrupted. Oh, and he might sort of suck the juices out of people … like a spider.
From there, it was all a matter of picking the right fairy tales to incorporate into the story. Since we’re free to use any of Grimms’ Fairy Tales, we’ve had to be pretty picky so far. Heroes have existed since 1812 (when the Brothers Grimm published their book of fairy tales), and each new generation has his or her own challenges and fairy tale monsters to deal with. It leaves the story open.
But the real trick is trying to figure out how a particular character might change as time goes on. If Tom Thumb is going to become more evil with each passing day, what happens to him? What does he do? Well, you’ll find out in book 7.
I’m enjoying doing this series, and I can’t wait to finish the last six episodes. I can honestly say I haven’t had this much fun writing in a long, long time.
Tags:Fairy tales, Grimm fairytales, Happily Never After, Isabella Fontaine, Prince Charming Must Die, Revenge of the Castle Cats, The Grimm Chronicles Volume One, Young Adult fiction
April 1st, 2013 at 10:27 pm
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