Horror Dream

I watched a gruesome horror movie last night... in my sleep. I'm not sure it was a nightmare; I can't recall feeling like the scary stuff was happening to me, or (worse) that I was the one doing it. It was more like watching a really nasty program on the inner TV.

The topic of the program was unnecessary surgery. We're talking really, truly uncalled-for operations, in which the patients were left disfigured, disabled, and in excruciating pain. I remember seeing horrible, badly-sutured wounds; a guy who'd had both kidneys removed for no reason, and must somehow get by without them; and even an operation transplanting somebody's brain into somebody else's skull. Most dreadful of all, I overheard the surgeon remarking that the new skull wasn't quite big enough, so the recipient was going to lose a goodly amount of brain tissue.

Why did I have such a cruel and disgusting dream? The first person I told about the dream asked, "What have you been reading lately?" There's someone who knows how I tick. Among the last half-dozen books I have read, one depicted a battle in which vampires and werewolves vivisected each other. Another featured a monster who collected eyeballs from other creatures (and people), fitting them into the surplus eye sockets on its horrid face. Still another book subjected its hero to a wasting disease in which maggots were erupting from sores all over his body. There was a bit of torture, a threat of subjecting an unwilling patient to a frontal lobotomy, and some distressingly unnatural body changes - and that only takes me back a couple of weeks.

I've been accumulating some pretty grisly material for my subconscious to mull over. Even re-reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - a bit of homework I've started, to get ready for the sixth Harry Potter movie this summer - involves a certain amount of unpleasant imagery. In my last reading session before bed last night, Harry got his nose stomped on and broken. Perhaps some of the blood that flowed over my bad dream was his.

So I guess the next book I read should give me a break from heavy-usage body parts. I'm planning to focus on The Little Grey Men by B. B., a book enthusiastically recommended by Julie Andrews. Since I know that her taste runs toward light-hearted fantasy, I reckon it's just about dream-safe.

Three More Book Reviews

Happenstance Found
by P. W. Catanese
Recommended Ages: 12+

I had enjoyed reading all of his Further Tales. So when P. W. Catanese sent me his latest book, I was thrilled. Even more exciting, however, was finding out that this first book in his new Books of Umber series moves his unique world of magic into a realm of deeper, richer fantasy. It is still a world where fairy tales are woven into the fabric of history; but now it is so much more.

There is a series called The Books of Umber within this book, as well. Those books are studies of the history, magic, and monsters of his adopted world, written by a explorer, inventor, shipping tycoon, and polymath named Lord Umber. Here is a fascinating man, whose appearance in the city of Kurahaven signaled a revolution in medicine, technology, and the arts - not to mention liberation from an evil witch. Umber surrounds himself with unusual people, copes with the conflicts that daily arise between them, and gleefully faces danger that would make other men cringe and cower. But he is also a flawed man with dark secrets, a curious history, and a form of bipolar disorder that occasionally drops him into a deep depression.

Umber's latest discovery is a boy named Happenstance, who has been left expressly for Umber to find, alone in a ruined city with no memory of his own past. Hap is an extraordinary person himself. His weird-looking, green eyes can see great distances and in total darkness. He can jump amazingly high. He never sleeps. And as his story moves forward from its blank first page, he discovers other powers, as well as ominous hints about where he comes from.

Somehow Umber thinks Hap is going to be important. He arrives at what may be a critical point in Kurahaven's history, as an old king lies sick in bed, watched by three princes of widely different character. Plus, Hap has a stalker: a horrible creature dubbed the Creep, who has strange powers and gruesome plans of his own.

Protecting Hap while searching for answers about who or what he is will be a fulltime job, even for a sharp file like Umber. It will call for the best talents of the remarkable people Umber has gathered around himself. Soon there are mysteries within mysteries: Who are the people known as Meddlers? Why did an archivist abscond with all Lord Umber's books about them? What is in the letter Hap passed along to Umber at the moment they met, a letter Umber is in no hurry to share? What secret does Umber keep in his study? What guest does he keep in his dungeon?

Hap will have to wait until another book for answers to some of these questions. For others, he will have to prove himself worthy of Lord Umber's confidence. You'll squirm with the lad as he tries to fit in with the prickly members of Umber's household. You'll grin as you start to understand the strange world Umber comes from. You'll shiver at the grandeur of the canvas the story is drawn on, and the amazing things drawn on it, from the Leviathan Barge to the royal palace, where grim forebodings might make you shiver again. And you'll hold your breath as Hap faces his worst fears, and things he ought to fear even more, on the stormy night when the Creep reappears.

These days, new fantasy series for young readers are coming out thick and fast. With so many fantasy worlds beckoning, it may seem next to impossible to choose your next destination. To make its way among all the others, a new series has to have a distinct, original idea behind it, and it has move toward something exciting. The characters in it need to be well-rounded people, complete with flaws and problems that make them interesting and that keep the story spinning in unexpected directions. Some wit and humor, a touch of romance, a wistful shade of tragedy, a quirky glimmer of the real world, and the promise of strange and urgent undertakings in the fantasy world, would be helpful. P. W. Catanese brings all of these things together. So if you're ready for the next head trip after Harry Potter, this book may be your ticket.

An Ocean of Magic
by Stephen Elboz
Recommended Ages: 11+

Here is the fourth of the Kit Stixby adventures, featuring a boy wizard whose best friends are a flying carpet (named Carpet) and Queen Victoria's favorite grandson (named Henry).

Kit's father, the Witch Doctor Royal, has been sent to Brazil to collect specimens of rare plants and animals. Kit flies to meet him for the trip home, but terrible news awaits him when he steps off the airship. Dr. Stixby and his meek assistant have gone missing in the Sargasso sea, a place where ships, zeppelins, and even whole islands have been known to disappear.

Fiercely determined to find his Dad, Kit joins another old friend - Mr. Skinner of Scotland Yard - to search the sea. Soon enough the mystery is solved when a monstrous pirate ship literally swallows the ship the boys were on. They come ashore on an island stocked with bakelite trees, fierce mechanimals, and rowdy pirates: a mechanical island, a ship really, created by the very same Stafford Sparks whose evil plans Kit has thwarted one after another.

This time it will take more than one boy wizard's reckless power and half-baked plans to thwart that criminal genius. For Sparks has invented a terrifying weapon, and he plans to use it to hold the British government to ransom. His first target: a luxury liner containing Dr. Stixby's priceless botanical specimens and a hold crowded with shipwreck survivors.

Once again, fans of J. K. Rowling will get a kick out of this very different boy wizard. Passionate, volatile, frequently in very high spirits, Kit is a little devil and no mistake. He mangles grammar, neglects his manners, flies fearlessly into danger, and makes it his business to save everybody he can while staying a step or two behind one of the nastiest non-magical villains ever to plague the magical world. Along the way he befriends a nereid, plans a jailbreak and a pirate battle, engineers a novel way to survive a plane crash at sea, and solicits the prayers of a cigar-chomping nun (whose whole convent prays full-time for the safety of pasengers on Catholic Airways, ecclesiastical class). For sheer funniness, it's hard to beat this fast-paced, eventful tale of magic and adventure.

Alfred Kropp: The Seal of Solomon
by Rick Yancey
Recommended Ages: 14+

How do you top a novel in which your teenage narrator dies and rises again to save the world? The author of The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp attempts it, at least. His answer involves a 3,000-year-old brass urn in which a bazillion demons have been sealed since the reign of King Solomon. They can only get out with the aid of a ring - the Seal of Solomon - whose wearer commands an army powerful enough to destroy the world. And the only person with a chance of stopping it is, you guessed it, 15-year-old Alfred Kropp.

Kropp isn't just any 15-year-old. He is a big, strong lad with a habit of honesty that some people (including himself) confuse with being simpleminded. He chatters nonstop when nervous, which leads him to make some very clever and funny remarks and shows that he isn't so simple after all. He also happens to be a billionaire, the last living descendant of Sir Lancelot, and a hero whose blood heals wounds. Nevertheless, by the same cruel logic that finds Harry Potter living with the Dursleys, this young paladin is stuck in a crummy foster home in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Just as Kropp is about to run away, he gets captured instead. Captured by a rogue agent of OIPEP (don't ask), who has stolen the seal and plans to unleash a demonic reign of terror on the world. Why does he need Kropp for this? It has something to do with the boy's blood, which has other properties OIPEP is interested in. Anyway, as soon as ex-Agent Mike Arnold smashes through his bedroom window, Kropp embarks on a non-stop journey full of murder attempts (mostly against himself), daring escapes, colossal battles, and all his worst fears. He nearly drowns, falls out of the sky, drives a very fast car through a hailstorm of fire and brimstone, and bonds with an agent whose very name - Operative Nine - means that, for the sake of his mission, everyone and everything is expendable.

If Kropp went through death in his first adventure, he goes through hell in this one. There aren't very many young-adult adventures whose heroes face the kind of danger Kropp faces. He's not an everyday hero. And this is not an everyday adventure. In spite of being something like a teenaged cross between Sir Galahad and James Bond, Kropp is also a thoughtful hero whose thoughts are worth knowing. For a hero who doesn't believe in God, Kropp packs some amazing spiritual experiences into his young life. And for a high-paced thriller, this book also packs some surprisingly penetrating insights into the nature of heaven and hell. I'm not saying it will make a believer out of you; but if you believe how much Kropp grows during this adventure, you'll have to see the third book in this series, Alfred Kropp: The Thirteenth Skull.

What If Starbucks Marketed Like the Church?

Someone sent this to me and I just HAD to pass it on!

EDIT: In discussing this video, a fellow blogger pointed out that what the church needs to do is market itself like Starbucks: i.e., it displays its brand prominently on the building. People know what that brand means, and if they want what it has to offer, they sell come to get it. Period!

Fire Your Programmers!

Today's cheerful bulletin concerns two pieces of software that totally stink.

First, I would like to draw your attention to the "Quikorder" system at Pizza Hut dot Com. It does not compare favorably with Papa John's online ordering system. PJ's website is a fast-uploading, easy-to-use, friendly online alternative to ordering by phone. PH's, on the other hand, requires you to wait through numerous slow downloads. Its "store finder" feature doesn't work properly, forcing you to go in endless circles if you're trying to order for carry-out (which is $2.50 cheaper than ordering for delivery, by the way). And it is very difficult to do "price shopping" on a menu that hides the price tag on what you are ordering; trial and error is the only way to hit a target dollar amount.

One one page, if you leave out one vital piece of information while ordering, Quikorder arbitrarily deletes several of your entries before it sends you back to fill in what you missed - so that you tend to keep being sent back to fix something, over and over. The order form forces you to register at the end of placing your order, if you didn't log in to start with; which creates another endless cycle, until you realize that you're trying to use your existing username and password not to log in, but to create a new membership. If you try to go back and log in after starting to place an order, it erases your order and you have to start all over.

What with one glitch or another, I had to start over a good half-dozen times the other night - and finally I had to negotiate a special dispensation with the store where I picked up my order. Pizza Hut's IT people really need to work on this. As it currently functions, the Quikorder system seems custom-designed to discourage people from using it. That can't be good for business.

Another program I just tried to use today seems designed on similar principles. I attempted to use OpenOffice to create a database table. The process was so ridiculously complex, the user interface so hard to figure out, and troubleshooting was so completely out the window, that I eventually gave up and started my project over in Excel. I only regret the time I wasted before I came to that decision. I got so little done for the time I put into it, and even that had to be entirely done over because there did not seem to be a way to copy the contents of my table.

OpenOffice's "Help," typically, required you to know the precise way the programmer's mind was mapped. If I had known that, I wouldn't have needed the help. I was reduced to struggling with pointless little experiments as I tried to figure out how to do each little thing - any of which I could have done without a moment's thought in Excel. I never did find out how to make it possible to type a decimal, such as 3.14, into a record without having every single record showing two decimal places. Don't tell me if you know. I no longer care. I eventually got the message OpenOffice had been trying to send me all along: "Buzz off."

Minnesota Is...

The news on Minnesota's Senate race is really discouraging. I'm not saying this as a Republican. Heck, I voted as an independent in Minnesota's 1998 gubernatorial election. Yep. Li'l ole me. I helped put Jesse "the Mouth" Ventura in the governor's mansion, though thank God it was as an absentee voter and I never actually had to live in the state during his term. It was painful enough watching my ex-home state become a national joke.

I didn't really vote for Jesse, technically. I voted against Republican Norm Coleman (because I thought he was an aisle-jumping traitor) and Democrat Skip Humphrey (because I thought he was a washed-up, entitled scumbag). I really only meant to throw my vote away because I despised the choices both major parties were offering. The embarrassing results taught me a lesson, a lesson that helped me overcome my gag reflex when I voted for Hillary in last year's presidental primary and for McCain in the election. The lesson: Always vote for the person you would be least disappointed to see win.

Minnesota, on the other hand, hasn't learned its lesson. They kicked out their incumbent senator (Norm Coleman again, poor sap) and replaced him with Al Franken. I kid you not. Another second-class celebrity who should have been laughed off the ballot for sheer hubris gets elected because, by golly, it's a great wheeze. It just goes to show that, although the people there may be "nice," Minnesota is a big fat idiot. Which seems to be the national average these days.

Gran Torino

Yesterday, I took advantage of having my car back and went to look at a movie. The matinee of the week was Gran Torino, starring and directed by Clint Eastwood.

At his time of life, Eastwood is perfect for the role of a grumpy, war-hero widower glowering at the ethnic gangs increasingly ruling his Detroit neighborhood. The result is a near-perfect film, replete with suspense, brooding anger, grudging respect, witty banter, politically incorrect humor, and sacrificial love.

The best slice of the celluloid cake has to do with an old, Polish-American curmudgeon teaching a rudderless Hmong youth how to be a man. It starts when the Hmong boy next door tries to steal Walt Kowalski's 1972 Ford, which he helped build when he worked at the plant, as a gang initiation. Thao Vang Lor is basically a good kid. So, with good material to start with, Kowalski makes a surprisingly successful project out of him: teaching him to use tools, talk to grown-ups, pick up a girl, and do paying work. But in spite of Walt's uniquely-flavored TLC, Thao will never be free of the Hmong gang that pursues him - never without blood being spilled.

Where the film hits the skids (just slightly) is in its casting. There aren't very many big, Hollywood films featuring Hmong actors. Because many of the key characters in this film are Hmong, Eastwood had to fall back on an amateur talent search. Heroic as their efforts were, these untried actors never seemed quite up to the job of carrying a big Hollywood film. Nevertheless I wouldn't be surprised to see Bee Vang, and perhaps also Ahney Her, build a film career - and the skills to go with it - from this start.

This movie may also boost the career of Christopher Carley, who plays the babyfaced priest who makes saving old Walt his personal mission. When Eastwood, to his face, calls him an "overeducated, 27-year-old virgin who likes to hold the hands of superstitious old ladies" and who knows nothing about life and death, it was a moment I recognized after locking horns with some of my first parishioners. Evidently Father Janovich makes a better comeback than I did, because he (sort of) makes a convert... while I'm here, writing movie reviews when I should be out looking for a job. Heigh-ho.

The Sisters Grimm

The Fairy-Tale Detectives
by Michael Buckley
Recommended Ages: 10+

Book 1 of The Sisters Grimm introduces us to Sabrina and Daphne, sisters age 11 and 7, who have been at the mercy of New York City's Child Welfare program since their parents disappeared 18 months ago. They have moved from one cruelly inappropriate foster home to another, Sabrina protecting her younger sister but growing increasingly cynical in the process. And now, a grandmother they were told was dead has come forward, offering them a home.

Sabrina doesn't care to be taken in - in any sense of the term - by someone she regards as an imposter, if not a certifiable loony. Granny Relda lives in a bizarre house in the small, upstate town of Ferryport Landing. There are too many locks on the doors, too many books with weird titles, too many impossible colors and flavors in the food -- plus, the old biddy claims they are descendants of the Brothers Grimm, who wrote not fairy tales but histories. And so the Sisters Grimm are hereditary guardians, problem-solvers, and detectives serving the many characters from those histories who live in Ferryport Landing.

Yes, clearly, Granny Relda is crackers. Sabrina decides to escape as soon as possible. The ridiculous thing is that her first chance comes when an actual giant kidnaps Granny Relda and her friend Mr. Canis, right in front of the girls. Sabrina's life is suddenly changed by the realization that all the old lady's outrageous stories were true. And now it's up to her and Daphne to save their family.

It won't be easy, given that many of the Everafters - as the fairy-tale denizens call themselves - are hostile to the Grimm family. It's hard to tell whom to trust; and Sabrina isn't a naturally trusting girl. Can they rely on Mayor Charming, who is quite honest about wanting to get rid of the Grimms? How about the local sheriff and his deputies, who (most appropriately) are the Three Little Pigs? Can they trust Jack the Giant Killer to help them stave off an invasion of giants? The ever-youthful Puck, king of mischief-makers, doesn't think so - but he's not so reliable himself.

This is only the beginning of a terrific series that blends characters from folklore with modern-day mystery and family drama. It's full of humor, thrills, plot twists, and snarky satire targeting people (from social workers to law enforcement personnel) who aren't cut out for their jobs. And given the adorable openness of little Daphne, combined with the closed-up shrewdness of Sabrina, there seems to be plenty of room for family conflict and character growth in the books to follow.

The Unusual Suspects
by Michael Buckley
Recommended Ages: 10+

First, before I discuss this second book in The Sisters Grimm series, I want to defend myself against any possibility of being charged with plagiarism. My Magic Quill column has a chapter, originally posted in March 2007, titled "The Unusual Suspects." I didn't get the idea for that title from this book, which was published at about that time and which I only got around to reading at the tail-end of 2008. I suspect that this book, along with several similarly-titled books and stories by various authors, took its name by a twist on "the usual suspects," a phrase first popularized by Claude Rains' character in Casablanca. That's certainly what I was thinking in March '07. Great minds think alike. Lots of them, evidently.

As for author Buckley, any charge of plagiarism would be futile. He has stolen his characters from a wide range of folklore and fantasy classics, from the fairy tales of Grimm and Andersen to the works of Baum and Carroll. He has cast his net so widely that one could accuse him of nothing worse than what Clive James said of J. K. Rowling: "ransacking a sorcerers' warehouse stocked with all the magic gear since Grimm's first fairy tales."

Most of that gear seems to be stored behind the magic mirror that lives in Granny Relda's spare bedroom. Also living under her roof are the last descendants of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Sabrina (11) and Daphne (7), who are both trying in their own way to adjust to their new living situation; and let's not forget Puck, an eternally-boyish fairy prince with an impish sense of humor and, when he chooses to reveal them, a pair of huge pink insect wings.

When Sabrina and Puck lock horns, you can often spot the spectre of puberty hovering nearby: some of it has to do with being at the age when girls and boys start to pay attention to each other. Which makes for a nice distraction, now and then, from the grim urgency of the case they are working on. As fairy-tale detectives, it's up to the Grimm family to police the Everafter population of Ferryport Landing, New York. And it's never needed more policing than now, what with a teacher at the local elementary school being eaten by a monster. Somehow this is connected with the way all the kids keep falling asleep in school, the discovery that several Everafter couples sold their babies, and the principal's peculiar power to control people and animals -- he is the Pied Piper of Hamelin, after all.

Throw in appearances by seemingly every fairy-tale character from Baba Yaga to Snow White - don't worry; I haven't mentioned the one that really matters - and you've got a comedy crossed with a mystery, seasoned with a dash of horror, a pinch of romance, and a generous dollop of subversive irony. I mean, who is ever going to see fairy tales the same way after seeing a pig (a literal pig) in a sheriff's uniform, a charging swarm of carnivorous rabbits, and a shrewish social worker making cow-eyes at a school guidance counselor? If you find these images provocative, you will find more and more of them as the series continues.

Besides the big case, this story also finds our main heroine dealing with a more personal problem. Since her parents disappeared, Sabrina has compensated for her harsh circumstances by developing a habit of distrust. Now that her world has been turned upside down, now that she knows fairy tales are real and that her parents were involved in them, now that she knows Everafters are behind her parents' disappearance, and many more despise the Grimm family - well, can you guess where this is going? Sabrina begins to have a little problem spelled H-A-T-E. And dealing with that problem raises this story from frivolous entertainment to the level of well-rounded, human storytelling a child can learn from and love.

The Problem Child
by Michael Buckley
Recommended Ages: 10+

When Wilhelm Grimm emigrated to upstate New York with a shipload of Everafters - the real, live characters from his histories-cum-fairy tales - not everyone made a smooth transition. A few, in fact, became dangerously disturbed. In this third installment in The Sisters Grimm, these fiendishly insane Everafters break loose and begin terrorizing the population of Ferryport Landing.

This outbreak of trouble just happens to coincide with the return of Sabrina and Daphne Grimm's Uncle Jake, a man whose very existence has been erased from the memories of most people in town. Why? Because his rash arrogance led to the escape of the very bad-guys who have now wreaking havoc again - to say nothing of Grandpa Grimm's death.

The villains in this case are somehow involved with the Scarlet Hand, the shadowy group of anti-Grimm Everafters who kidnapped the girls' parents. So they are doubly motivated, as fairy-tale detectives, to get to the bottom of this case. Solving it may help them find their parents.

Once again, the bad guys aren't the only problem Sabrina and her family have to contend with. Uncle Jake has to work through his guilt to feel worthy of his mother's forgiveness. Both he and Sabrina struggle with an addiction to magical objects - being "touched," as Baba Yaga calls it. And what happens to Puck leads directly to another family crisis, and the succeeding adventure titled Once Upon a Crime.

What makes this series of fairy-tale mysteries work so well? Perhaps it is the author's precise sense of balance. Somehow he keeps brewing these rich concoctions, with chilling mystery, family drama, rib-tickling spoof and eye-popping magic all at their proper strength. If it was any more serious, it wouldn't be so much fun for kids of all ages. If it was any less, it wouldn't make you care so much about its characters - even the off-center ones. Buckley writes with wit and compassion, but above all he spins a yarn in which one can easily get caught up.

Once Upon a Crime
by Michael Buckley
Recommended Ages: 10+

Sabrina and Daphne Grimm finally have their parents back - in body, at least. No one knows quite how to wake them from their magical sleep. But the Grimm family of fairy-tale detectives has a more urgent problem. The fairy prince Puck - sort of an adopted member of the family - has been gravely injured and needs the attention of others of his kind. This means that Granny and the girls must take him out of the safe haven of Ferryport Landing, which for hundreds of years has been home to many of the Everafters (fairy tale folk) who came to America with Wilhelm Grimm. They must take him to the land of faerie, or what's left of it. Oddly enough, it turns out to be a restaurant in New York City.

Now if you thought characters from Grimm's Fairy Tales were trouble, wait till the fairies from Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream get involved. These days, the Everafters outside of Ferryport Landing have grown increasingly scattered, and Faerie has all but disappeared. What remains of it is a mafia-style empire, topped by King Oberon and his embittered wife Titania. This is why ex-sheriff Hamstead's romance with a fairy's main squeeze reads like the plot of a verismo opera. It also means trouble for Sabrina, when Puck's levitating coccoon chooses her, rather than his long-ditched fiancee, to be his guardian while he heals. (If you've missed the hints of a developing romance here, you may also have missed the Ron/Hermione ship. Ooh! Low blow!)

Things get serious when Oberon is fatally poisoned. Suddenly Puck is the King of Faerie, when he is least able to do anything about it. Meanwhile, Sabrina is struggling to understand new discoveries about her mother, who turns out not to have had such a fairy-tale-free lifestyle after all. Does she really know the people closest to her? Long reluctant to accept her calling as a fairy-tale detective, Sabrina wrestles with this question while searching for clues in dwarf-infested subway tunnels, Scrooge's psychic seance parlor, and Macy's Department store, where the robotic Christmas displays are supervised by... ha, ha, you'll have to find out for yourself!

In spite of all the suspects and clues, you may be amazed to find out whodunit. In fact, part of what gives the climax of this book its punch is the fact that there are really two crimes in it, and two bad-guys afoot, each promising Sabrina a chance to apply her growing skills as a detective, and her already considerable powers as a swashbuckling girl-hero. Cringe at the spectacular dangers involved in multiple climaxes, including (but not limited to) a scene that poses the question: What if King Kong was a giant robot? But don't worry. Sabrina lives to fight crime another day!

Magic and Other Misdemeanors
by Michael Buckley
Recommended Ages: 10+

Here is the fifth book in the captivating fairy-tale/mystery series titled The Sisters Grimm. This one finds Sabrina (11) and Daphne (7) still trying to figure out how to waken their parents from a nearly two-year-long magical sleep. But the mysterious society known as Scarlet Hand, which kidnapped Henry and Veronica Grimm in the first place, is not yet finished making trouble. In fact, the girls hardly seem to have any time to work on the problem of their parents, now that a new crime wave has broken out in the Everafter sanctuary of Ferryport Landing, New York.

Certain Everafters - the real, living, immortal people whose life stories inspired the great fairy tales - are stealing magical items from others. A wand, a clock, and a vial of water from the Fountain of Youth have been stolen, and whoever has them is using them for some unknown purpose. As a side effect of this ill-gotten magic, rifts are opening in the fabric of time. The past and the future are getting mixed up, giving the girls a glimpse of an awful future when the Scarlet Hand is running rampant and only a few hopeless defenders are left... and, in a blast from the past, putting an ancestor of the Grimm sisters in jeopardy, and all his descendants with him. With an avaricious new sheriff and a loathesome new mayor breathing down their necks, it looks as if there may be no future for the Grimms -- or for the many Everafters helped by their detective work.

So this series comes to its daring and thrilling treatment of Time Travel. Hearts, homes, and lives are at stake. But in spite of the big fantasy concept and the serious stakes involved, it remains a kid-friendly mystery with lots of humor and a good deal of romance (some of the tragic variety). We find out something new about the seemingly ageless fairies. We encounter dragons, witches, talking mirrors, diabolical villains (notably including tax collectors), and even a feline exterminator who is terrified of mice. And at the end, we experience the shock of seeing a character switch sides. More on that is sure to come in Book 6, titled Tales from the Hood.