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Dragged to the fading town of Grymm by their parents, unwilling stepsiblings Mina and Jacob find themselves living in a place that is right out of their nightmares. A letting agent who seems to want to eat their baby brother, a milkshake bar which serves maggots in its drinks, and a bloodthirsty butcher, baker and candlestick maker are the very least of their worries as they begin to uncover a much older, much more insidious evil at work.
In Grymm, nothing is what it seems - as the residents are very fond of saying. There's more to the novel, too, than what appears on the surface. The hilarious banter between the two protagonists gives the impression that this is a middle grade book. But be warned, this is most certainly a horror novel, where people get turned into macabre artworks or baked into pies. It is truly disturbing in places, with Austin never shy of embracing the same love of bloodshed and gore that is found in the original tales that inspired him.
Like those stories, Grymm is wonderfully entertaining, superbly imaginative and perfectly paced. Action-packed set pieces - and a frenetic writing style that sometimes feels like there are no full stops for pages - keep the plot thundering along right up to the gripping finale. Jacob and Mina are likeable and believable heroes, but it is the larger-than-life characters they encounter in Grymm which make this book a delight. They are the timeless, instinctive horror of fairy tales made flesh in a modern day setting, and they make for a genuinely scary story. David Lynch meets Brothers Grimm, and highly recommended.
http://www.inismagazine.ie/reviews/book/grymm
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