Author : Chris Colfer
Series : The Land of Stories #2
Pub Date : August 6th 2013
Publisher : Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Genre : Fantasy, Adventure
Pages : 517
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After decades of hiding, the evil Enchantress who cursed Sleeping Beauty is back with vengeance. Alex and Conner Bailey have not been back to the magical Land of Stories since their adventures in The Wishing Spell ended. But one night, they learn the famed Enchantress has kidnapped their mother! Against the will of their grandmother, the twins must find their own way into the Land of Stories to rescue their mother and save the fairy tale world from the greatest threat it's ever faced.
Review
This book is really... surprising. I read The Wishing Spell first before i read this book, and somehow it's really different in some ways. This book is still, like, light read but with a little darkness, like the author put a little twist into the story. I mean, the things that made this book dark is just because we see the antagonist- the villains- more. We see their past and we meet them. So it's a little bit intimidating.
This book is more action-packed then it's prequel, The Wishing Spell. It's still the same adventure novel-type, same as The Wishing Spell, it's still the search for some important things. But now, they have to stole from the baddies instead of the goddies. Baddies is bad guys while Goddies is good guys, if you don't know.
So instead of willingly give the things up for the crew, in this book they have to fight to get it. I liked this book a lot better because of this aspect. They actually have to try and fight for what they want while in The Wishing Spell they have to only try. And the gang's bigger this time around, so we get more point-of-views, we can see others people reaction to this journey.
The bad guy- i'm sorry, i mean, bad girl or woman?- in this story is, like, very evil. Don't worry for you out there who are allergic to bad-guys-with-no-explanation-of-why-they-are-evil, we see her back story and we know why she is evil. Although, i can't relate to it. I can understand, but it's hard for me to relate to it.
I really love fairytales, if you guys don't know. I'm a big fan of them since i'm very, very young. Before i go to sleep, i always hear their stories, so it's a lot of fun to meet some familiar faces along the way. It's not just the main fairytales like Cinderella, Snow White, Rapunzel, etc. but we see other minors. So when they are told i was like smiling and thinking "I know this one!"
The fairytales are really woven together perfectly. So it's a chain of stories, because of this, this happened and because of that happened, this happened. So it really is great. I love how authors wove fairytales together so it makes one story and it makes sense. I don't know about you, but i enjoy reading that.
This book is really funny too. In The Wishing Spell, i didn't laugh like at all (Okay, maybe once?) but in The Enchantress Returns, i laughed a bunch of times. Some dialogues just makes me cracks up and some made me smile and grin, some made me chuckle. And the funny dialogues didn't only focuses on one character, it's on the whole gang. I don't really like books where only one character only cracks me up, it driven me to only like only one character.
As that well said, the characters here are very loveable. Their friendship and kindness are really great. It has it advantages and it has its disadvantages. Like some characters aren't very smart, they just do before they think but beside that i love the characters. But it has it reasons too, but i'm just saying to think it more deeply.
Some scenes are very predictable while some is not. If you look at the cover and look at this book's sequel, which is The Grimm Warning, you'll definitely got spoiled if you focus on it carefully. And not to mention because this book is a middle-grade. In The Wishing Spell, it's like there's problem but they can really solve through it in a jiffy. In here, they have problems much more complex but it's like they are having a chain of miracles. But i can't blame that on the books, because it is middle-grade.
Some parts made me sad and shocked, but not that much. I didn't cry on this book because i'm not a book cry-er but if you are, i don't think you'll cry. But... there's one scene, but it's not that sad if you already research the sequel. The shocked scenes are very limited too, not like gasps but like "Oh?" but it's still entertaining.
There's some scenes that really made me shiver down to my spine and i really loved those parts! Like, i'm shivering right now, remembering it. At the prologue when Sleeping Beauty discovers that the Enchantress is back, i was like trembling. I'm really scared for the character at that point because when a character made you shiver, it's not a good sign.
There's some romance aspects in it. I really loved it because it's all cute, but some were like very weird. And some was like "Their love can make the world stand in glory or burn it down to ashes" like that. There's many couple in this book, because of fairytales, of course, so it's many.
The cover is really amazing. I love the colour purple and magenta in it. It really make the book stands out. I love the characters in it : Snow Queen, a random angry polar bear, The Harp, The Sea witch. Oh and look Alex and Conner pausing dramatically for the cover with a light shining, what a coincidence. And those eyes, my what big eyes you have, lady.
Overall i gave this a FOUR AND A HALF out of FIVE. I really liked this book. In my point scale, i give it about 84. It's a decent book and i definitely recommend this if you like fairytales and comfortable with middle grades genre. The world building and character devolopment here is pretty good too, i'm pretty excited to read the sequel.
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