Note: Review contains some spoilers.
I had heard very little about these books when I picked them up. I knew they involved a group of siblings discovering that fairies and other such mythical creatures were real. I suppose the size of the books should have clued me in to the fact that not much was going to happen. Frankly, that is my biggest disappointment with both of these books. The story feels half-baked, at best. While interesting stuff happens, nothing really feels consequential. Even moments that should feel tense, don’t. I’m willing to admit that as an adult I might have some biases, but I’ve also read children’s books that make me feel tense and worry if everything will work out. I think the major difference between those books and these two is that the authors took the time to get me invested in the characters. Even after two books, I barely feel like I know anything about the Grace children. I relate the most to Simon, being that I was that kid who wanted to bring home every little critter that crossed my path. Frankly, I might feel more invested in these books if they were from his perspective. I’m not quite sure why they aren’t to be honest. Him being the animal lover, I find it more believable that he would find the idea of fairies and whatnot deeply interesting. Instead, we get Jared, who literally introduces himself as just being a problem child and having no interesting characteristics outside of that. Not a great way to convince me I should keep reading.
The first book, “The Field Guide”, has so much potential. I found the setting to be delightfully cryptic, but then it doesn’t ever really feel like they utilize it to their full advantage. The authors could have made the house into its own character. I feel the story would have been much improved if they had. Unfortunately, the lack of depth in the setting is reflected in perhaps the biggest problem overall with this first book. It may seem harsh to say, but the pacing of this first book is just downright terrible. I think because this book is so short it feels like they almost rush into the story without any build-up. The Grace family is moving into their new home in chapter one and Jared hears something in the walls. By chapter two (less than 24-hours of them moving into this house, mind you) the Grace children have busted open a wall in search of whatever is making the noise and found a little “nest”. There’s no build up to finding it. They aren’t in the house for days or weeks, hearing the noise off and on. No, everything happens in rapid succession without establishing a norm or baseline. This leads me to feeling like all these plot points are being shoved down my throat one after another, but I’m given no time to just sit with them. I barely know anything about the Grace children or what their normal life looks like, before I’m just expected to care about what’s happening to them. Personally, that doesn’t work for me as a reader. What makes all this worse is that when you finally start to feel like the story is going somewhere, it ends. It doesn’t even end in a satisfying way. Suddenly a fae creature reveals itself to them and tells them to forget about the guide because it will just cause them trouble. This is a flimsy excuse for a warning, considering that the Grace childrens’ problems with fae creatures starts before they even find the guide. I feel that this warning would hold more weight if finding the guide is what caused their troubles to start. Nothing in the second book makes this warning feel any less flimsy.
“The Seeing Stone” is better, but still leaves much to be desired. Some amount of time has passed since the Grace kids found the guide and, as far as we know, nothing bad has happened. That quickly changes, however, when Simon is taken by goblins. The main reason I liked this book better than the first is that it attempts to be more suspenseful. Unfortunately, the tension is broken too quickly for me to actually feel tense. Yes, the majority of this book is spent attempting to get Simon back from the goblins, but every other “roadblock” Jared and Malerie come across is resolved with little difficulty. The troll they come across could have been so much scarier. Instead it comes across as pouty and sad. Sure they use it later to take care of the goblins, but that doesn’t make up for the fact that its introduction has it basically whining at the kids to come closer so it can catch them. The ending circles back to this warning about the guide just causing them trouble when Simon mentions that the goblins kidnapped him because they thought he had it. I still fail to see how the guide is causing their problems, though. If anything, they’ve used it multiple times to help them against creatures that were already causing trouble in the world.
Having only read two of the five books in this series, I can’t say for certain that they didn’t need to be a series of books. But I do feel pretty strongly that with the way these books are written they could have just been one book with five parts (and frankly splitting it into five parts probably wouldn’t be necessary either). I think this story concept has so much potential, yet it’s poorly executed. The pacing is awful. The characters aren’t nearly fleshed out enough. I feel like each of these books could have been double the size to slow the story down and that would have made it better. In general, I feel like the authors didn’t have enough faith in their story or their audience to try to do more with them. It’s a shame because I really do feel these could have been quite spectacular. While I may still read the other books in the series, I sadly have very little faith in the outcome.
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