The Brimstone Key | Derek Benz
The Grey Griffins are many things - monster hunters, associates of the Templar knights, legends in their own right - but they are also children. School aged children. The first book in the Clockword Chronicles takes them to the Iron Bridge Academy.
And that was about as far as I got. I wanted to give it ye olde college try. I have a soft spot for steampunk, have had it since that time in my life where I watched my VHS cassette of The Rocketeer over and over and over again. And as a middle-school reader, I obsessed over any book that included a school designed specifically for people with advanced skills. You know, as a warm-up for when Xavier's School for the Gifted and Talented finally got around to sending my admittance packet.
But this series relies too heavily on a few crutches. For starters, when I read something is Book One, I assume it is The Beginning. But too much of the character development and falling-in-loveness you need to do with The Grey Griffens happens in the first series of books about them.
I didn't feel invested in their Harry Potter-esque start to a new school, with the weird Metro commute and immediate feuds. Nor could I stand the sthe ridiculous cards. I get it! Juvenile series need marketable angles. Kids love card games and so will love kids who rely on cards to save the world. I guess. I spent a great deal of my own childhood around baseball cards, but for some reason any juvenile series relying on cards drives me up the wall.
The book wasn't terrible, it just wasn't for me. Mr. Sloth's review is still forthcoming.
- Posted from Jersey City, NJ
Posted on Monday, Nov 15, 2010
