Monday, July 31

Book Review | The Grimm Legacy by Polly Shulman


“Would you really want 
to live in world where only 
the possible is possible?”
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The Grimm Legacy 
(The Grimm Legacy #1)

Elizabeth has a new job at an unusual library - a lending library of objects, not books. In a secret room in the basement lies the Grimm Collection. That's where the librarians lock away powerful items straight out of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales; seven-league boots, a table that produces a feast at the blink of an eye, Snow White's stepmother's sinister mirror that talks in riddles.

When the magical objects start to disappear, Elizabeth embarks on a dangerous quest to catch the thief before she can be accused of the crime or captured by the thief.

Polly Shulman has created a contemporary fantasy with a fascinating setting and premise, starring an ordinary girl whose after-school job is far from ordinary and leads to a world of excitement, romance and magical intrigue. 



The Wells Bequest 
(The Grimm Legacy #2)



Leo never imagined that time travel might really be possible, or that the objects in H. G. Wells’ science fiction novels might actually exist. And when a miniature time machine appears in Leo’s bedroom, he has no idea who the tiny, beautiful girl is riding it. But in the few moments before it vanishes, returning to wherever—and whenever—it came from, he recognizes the other tiny rider: himself!

His search for the time machine, the girl, and his fate leads him to the New-York Circulating Material Repository, a magical library that lends out objects instead of books. Hidden away in the Repository basement is the Wells Bequest, a secret collection of powerful objects straight out of classic science fiction novels: robots, rockets, submarines, a shrink ray—and one very famous time machine. And when Leo’s adventure of a lifetime suddenly turns deadly, he must attempt a journey to 1895 to warn real-life scientist Nikola Tesla about a dangerous invention. A race for time is on!

In this grand time-travel adventure full of paradoxes and humor, Polly Shulman gives readers a taste of how fascinating science can be, deftly blending classic science fiction elements with the contemporary fantasy world readers fell in love with in The Grimm Legacy.

The Poe Estate 
(The Grimm Legacy #3)

This thrilling stand-alone companion to The Grimm Legacy and The Wells Bequest is a mind-bending, rousing adventure celebrating classic ghost and horror stories. Sukies been lonely since the death of her big sister, Kitty-but Kittys ghost is still with her. At first that was comforting, but now Kittys terrifying anyone who gets too close. Things get even weirder when Sukie moves into her familys ancestral home, and an older, less familiar ghost challenges her to find a treasure. Her classmate Cole is also experiencing apparitions. Fortunately, an antique brooms at hand to fly Sukie and Cole to the New-York Circulating Material Repositorys spooky Poe Annex. As they search for clues and untangle ancient secrets, they discover their histories intertwine and are as full of stories of love, revenge, and pirate hijinks as some of the most famous fiction.

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My answer to the quote question at the beginning is no - I want there to be more than just the possibles, to encounter what might be fantastical and impossible.

I encountered this book in a picture I saw in the PageHabit Book Club in Facebook and I knew I needed to read it. Doubly so when I found out there were three books. I love reading anything connected to the Grimm Brothers. I did set myself up with a lower expectation writing style wise and it was a good thing I did.

The premise was very promising - there is a circulating repository (like a library but for more than just books) that has a collection of Literary objects that people can borrow. Our main characters are, from what I gathered, young teens or tweens and it reflected in the writing style of the author. The first and 2nd books had a really choppy thought content that made it feel cheesy and the magic wasn't as grand as I expected. It lacked description in a lot of parts and then over described in some. The 3rd book was by far the best read of the three. It still sounded pretty "Middle School-ish" but there was more coherence to the plot and content.

So in the first book we are Introduced to Elizabeth Rew who wrote a paper about the Grimm Brothers for her Social Studies teacher. She then gets a job at the Repository and makes friends with the beautiful Anjali Rao, basketball star Marc Meritt , regular guy Aaron who was mean to her at the start, the then 10 year old Jaya Rao (Anjali's sister), and  3 year old Andre Meritt (Marc's brother). There are a host of other characters as well that are permanent fixtures in the Repository like Dr. Rust the Head Repositorian. Basically the young Pages (some sort of assistants) go on a wild adventure to save the Repository's Grimm Collection of objects from being stolen and sold to private collectors. The characters have their own way of detecting magic - sight, sound, smell, and taste (yes taste) and they use it to figure our the fake objects from the real ones.

In the 2nd book, Jaya is already around 15-17 years old and is now the head page in the repository (I assume that Elizabeth, Aaron, Marc, and Anjali are in college or something). She meets and recommends Leo for a Page position in the repository after "Future" Leo and Jaya showed up at "Present" Leo's room to warn him. It triggered the events the led Leo to the Repository in the guise of researching for his Science Fair project on robots. In this book they use the Wells Bequest Collections (From the works of H.G. Wells), travel back in time and save the world. This is a more scientific look at what people saw as "magic" more than a hundred years ago. 

The 3rd book is where we see great improvement in the content and writing style of the author and the plot revolves around the Gothic/Macabre. We are immersed in the life of Sukie after her sister dies (and becomes a ghost), and their family had to give up their house and live with their old cousin in the family estate (and yes it's a haunted house). This can be read as a stand alone book but it's a nice round off to the first two as well. Sukie meets the teen Andre and adult Elizabeth (I loved that she has a Phd now and came back to work in the Repository), and they help her discover the secrets of her family - why they have ghosts and why they have a Hawthorne broom (flying broom stick) as an heirloom. Sukie experienced the impossible outside of the Repository so they didn't have to go through the hoops  to get access to the Special Collections - especially the Poe Estate.

I've probably revealed more spoilers than is necessary. Haha. Overall I guess the series is okey, not great or horrible, just okey. These books were written with Middle Schoolers in mind. I wish the idea could be explored further though for either YA or adult demography.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐

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