The Sisters Grimm: The Inside Story | Michael Buckley

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When Master kidnaps their younger brother, fairy tale detectives Sabrina and Daphne Grimm must follow him into the Book of Everafter. There, they must chase the villain and his assistant, Pinocchio, without attracting the attention of The Editor and his team of vicious revisers.

I've been meaning to try this series on for size for a while and am glad I got the opportunity to do so for Cybils. I think the Grimm Sisters themselves are pretty fascinating. Their storyline and background is a nice play on familiar tales and very accessible to readers of varying genres. There's a little adventure, a little mystery and a lot of humor.

I'm having a hard time judging this - Book 8 - outside of the rest of the series, however, as it relies heavily on the prior knowledge regarding Sabrina and Mirror's relationship. The events in the book prior are a turning point in the series, when the identity of the Master is revealed, with irrevocable damage occuring to this particular friendship. Sabrina is dealing with the consequences of her decisions over the period of time covered in the first seven books and it's hard to appreciate her candor, hurt and confusion without considering these volumns. I liked the clever interplay of varying fairytale stories, as well as plays on writing and literary terminology, but to look at this book alone does a disservice to the rest of the series.

I made it pretty far into the book, but didn't get to the very end. It turns out that cold that I've been carrying around in my back pocket was actually a very advanced case strep throat. One antibotic needle and a massive dose of horsepills later, I'm still down for the count. Since this whole "lay about your PJs in your mother's house while your stack of Cybils reads is sitting on your bedroom floor the next town over" is getting in the way of my pace, I had to choose to go ahead without learning the ending. But that's okay, I plan to rewind later in the year and start with Book One -- I've got a soft spot for saucy female detectives, literary or not. And on that note, to pirated streaming copies of Veronica Mars I go!

Posted on Tuesday, Oct 26, 2010