Another great installment in the Land of Stories series. I feel bad for Alex and Connor, they had a lot to unpack in this book. Looking forward to reading the next book in the series to see what kind of trouble these two get into next. ( )

Representation: Black and Asian characters
Trigger warnings: Death of a grandmother, blood, grief and loss depiction, military violence and war themes, fire, explosions, physical assault and injury, near-death experiences from falls, sexism, sexist slur
Score: Five out of ten.

Well that was another disappointment.

I haven't read from Chris Colfer in months but I picked A Grimm Warning up to pass the time, hoping it would be better than the previous two instalments (A Wishing Spell and The Enchantress Returns.) It wasn't. I headed in with lowered expectations, but it was still underwhelming when I closed the last page.

It starts (more like continues) with Alex and Conner Bailey picking up after the events of the preceding book, but this time there's a twist, but it only makes the central storyline more disjointed. Conner lives on Earth, otherwise known as the Otherworld, but I'll use the first name (the last makes me cringe.) Alex lives in The Land of Stories, which includes fairies, the Fairy Godmother, fictional figures and mythical beasts, of course. The multiple 3rd person POV is an intriguing choice as it allows Colfer to tell two stories. The pacing is slow, though, with a length of more than 450 pages, but it could've been shorter if the filler pages weren't there. The protagonists don't develop. Rather, they remain the same throughout A Grimm Warning, adding to my disengagement.

I discovered The Enchantress Returns to lack diversity in my review, so I thought Colfer solved that issue, at least in A Grimm Warning, when he included a Black character, Lindy, and an Asian, Wendy, but they were gone soon enough, much to my dismay. There were so many side characters it felt like character soup and it was difficult to keep track, like Breanne 'Bree' Campbell, Rook, Mindy, Cindy and Emmerich. Not to mention the group of fairies. Even when Conner and Bree land in The Land of Stories, it felt repetitive as this is the third time this happened. Can I go somewhere else, at least? The concluding 100 pages are action-packed (where the fairy tale characters fight a French army from the 1800s) with a heartstopping finish, which is the only enjoyable section, but other than that it was tedious to read. The big reveal happens when the Masked Man is the twins' biological father, but I don't think the following three continuations would be an improvement. ( )

Boy that ending... it was such a good book. can't wait for the next one ( )

Boy that ending... it was such a good book. can't wait for the next one ( )

It takes at least a hundred pages for this third book to start revealing its story, with Colfer spending a lot of setup time on Alex and Conner's separate lives. Alex's fairy powers and her magic unicorn are a bit too cute, and when she conjures up the magic path ... if she can do it that easily, I guess she's practically omnipotent (when the author wants her to be)? The rules for magic in this world haven't been fully thought out, which makes it prone to solving any problem at the drop of the author's whim. On top of this, the military tactics used by both sides are weak in the extreme, which is credible for the fairies but not so much for the French general. Fortunately armies can teleport across the map at a moment's notice, providing an opportunity to explain to the young reader in your family what 'deus ex machina' means.

Of course the target audience doesn't notice or care because of the funny bits (Trollbella being the highlight), awkward teenage romance in bloom, fun surprise reveals and relationships (the author at his most creative), and the twins still standing up to enormous odds with their determination and good will. The only laziness that might be noticed is Colfer's new propensity for exhaustively listing things: exactly who is in which carriage, exactly who is tied to what stake, etc. The series template still works but it's getting rough around the edges, and this is only book three. ( )