Barnaby Grimes: Legion of the Dead [Import] [Hardcover]

Paul Stewart (Author), Chris Riddell (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday (June 5, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385611935
• ISBN-13: 978-0385611930
• Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 0.9 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,569,473 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Paul Stewart is the co-creator of the bestselling Edge Chronicles series, with Chris Riddell. He is also the author of a number of previous titles for children including The Wakening.

Talking to Paul Stewart & Chris Riddell about the Edge Chronicles

Q. What was your inspiration for The Edge Chronicles?
Paul: The Edge Chronicles started off with the map. Chris drew it and gave it to me saying, 'here is the world, tell me what happens there.'
Chris: I drew a map that looked like the edge of a map because I've always been fascinated by the edges of maps - the place where the known world ends.
Paul: My main inspiration for the Deepwoods was perhaps the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm, though other books-Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, Gormenghast, Gulliver's Travels- also played their part.
Q: What was your favorite character(s) to create?
Chris: My favorite character is the spindlebug. It was easy for Paul to write that it was see-through, like glass, but a challenge for an illustrator to draw. The creatures live an immense amount of time-up to four centuries -which means that they witness a lot more history of the Edge than other characters.
Paul: My favorite characters are the banderbears. Chris drew them first as fierce, pyramid-like bear creatures. Because they looked so ferocious, I made their character more timid. We have enjoyed developing the creatures as the series has progressed, learning about their natural habits and habitat and creating a language all of their own.
Q: Where did you come up with the names for your characters? The various personalities and life stories?
Paul: Both of us hate the clichéd fantasy names and tried to make the names in the Edge world a little different. Woodtrolls have woody names, like Snatchwood, Gruffbark, Snetterbark. Slaughterers have 'meaty' names like Gristle, Sinew, Tendon and Brisket. The academics have Latin/Basque names with lots of ius's and x's. Cowlquape, who goes through lots of changes, has a name taken from the German for tadpole - Kaulquappe. While Twig, of course, is just a tiny bit of the forest.
As the series has progressed, with prequels and sequels, the life histories of the various characters have become more deeply described. So Twig's mother, Maris, is only mentioned in Beyond the Deepwoods. In book 4, the Curse of the Gloamglozer, we meet her as a girl. And in the book we have just completed, Book 7 - Freeglader - we learn all about what happened to her after she abandoned her baby in the Deepwoods. The continuity revealed as the story unfolds is deeply satisfying.
Q: What was your favorite book as a child?
Chris: Flat Stanley by Jeff Brown
Paul: The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
Q: Since you both work as a team from conception to finish, what is the creative process like? How exactly does the collaboration work?
Paul: The pictures and words take shape simultaneously, each affecting the development of the other. Sometimes characters and creatures start with a picture, sometimes with a textual description. In addition, the plot is worked on constantly by both of us and, when they are around, our children! Similarly, the text is passed back and forth, being rewritten continuously, until both of us are happy with it.
Q: What has been the most challenging part of writing the series?
Paul: The whole process is challenging. More importantly, though, it is also rewarding. Both of us have immense fun playing with the Edge world. Beyond the Deepwoods was the simplest book, an episodic rite of passage novel where we, as well as the main protagonist, began to explore this new world. As we have gone deeper into it, the world has become richer and richer, and the storylines similarly, more involved. We are fascinated by the way the world is still developing as we learn more and more about its history and explore all areas of the political and natural world in increasing depth.
Q: When did you first begin writing/drawing?
Chris: At five years old in the back pew of my father's church. My mother gave me paper and pens to keep me quiet during Dad's (very interesting) sermons.
Paul: From the moment I could write, I have been writing down stories. At seven, I was working on a series of stories about a snail called Oliver. At ten, I attempted to write a follow-up to The Phantom Tollbooth with ideas that took shape over the next 20 years and finally became a book entitled The Thought Domain.
Q: In Midnight Over Sanctaphrax, Twig deals with the loss of two father figures. How is this important for his development?
Paul: Twig has to grow up and assume responsibility for his father's crew and, when he learns of Tuntum's death, he realizes how he has grown and matured since he left the Woodtroll village. He hopes that Tuntum would be proud of him, and what he has achieved.
Q: What scene did you have the most fun creating?
Chris: Both of us enjoyed the wig-wig arena scene a lot. The whole Shryke slave market, with its platforms and walkways all hanging from the Deepwoods trees, was great fun to create as a home for the flightless Shrykes. The escape from it on Prowlgrinback was also great fun both to write and draw.
Paul: Midnight over Sanctaphrax was the third in the series, and the book where we were beginning to reap the rewards both of close collaboration and of getting to know the world more deeply. The Prowlgrins (which I had originally described as being like hyena/leopard-like creatures, but which Chris had drawn as a curious cross between a whale and a toad) looked to me as if they were brilliantly designed for leaping from branch to branch. Therefore the pictures in Book 1 directly influenced the plot in Book 3. Similarly, in book 1, I had wanted a pirate-like punishment similar to keelhauling, and had come up with sky-firing. In Midnight over Sanctaphrax, this throwaway idea becomes pivotal to the plot- but we won't give it away just in case you haven't read the book yet!
Q: The Edge Chronicles seems perfectly suited for film, with its fast-paced action, loveable creatures, and incredible comic-timing. Were you thinking along these lines during its inception?
Paul: We did not deliberately set out to produce fiction which could be turned into a film. That said, both of us work in a very visual way, so a lot of the plotting, characterization and scene development is quite cinematic. It would be a great thrill to see The Edge Chronicles realized on the big screen!

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars This book will thrill many young readers, June 11, 2010

By 

A Customer (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Barnaby Grimes: Legion of the Dead (Hardcover)

The life of a tick-tock lad is not for everyone. The work is dangerous and demands punctuality, cunning and dexterity. And if, like Barnaby Grimes, you are a high-stacking tick-tock lad, your job is even more dangerous as you jump from roof to roof, shimmy down drainpipes, and come and go by window instead of door. Brave and clever as he is, Barnaby may be no match for the gruesome figures he encounters in his latest adventure, LEGION OF THE DEAD.

As fans already know, tick-tock lads are messengers ("tick-tock, time is money!") who go to great lengths to deliver goods and messages all across the city. Barnaby is used to close calls, evil villains and frightening situations. He has fought off supernatural wolves and survived the chaotic halls of a cursed boarding school. But, in LEGION OF THE DEAD, he faces zombie gangsters and soldiers, not to mention giant lampreys and shady grave robbers, all the while hoping to impress a beautiful young nurse named Lucy Partleby and teach fellow tick-tock lad Will Farmer the finer points of highstacking.

A panic is sweeping through Barnaby's bustling, crowded and foggy city as corpses are disappearing from their graves. And this is just stoking the fire of the Victorian fear of being buried alive. Wealthy citizens now pay to have bells attached to their dead hands so that if they turn out to be alive after all, they can be exhumed. Yet Barnaby has more pressing things to worry about, like being forced to attend the funeral of Firejaw O'Rourke, the Emperor of Gatling Quays, the leader of the various nasty gangs that rule the city's underworld, and conducting underwater experiments for his friend, the eminent zoologist Professor Pinkerton-Barnes.

What could the gangland funeral and Pinkerton-Barnes's experiment have in common? Not much, except they lead Barnaby to the Adelaide Graveyard where he finds himself, once again, drawn into the center of the mystery and danger. It turns out that the city's worst fears have been realized: corpses are out of their graves. However, Barnaby doesn't see the work of grave robbers but of Firejaw O'Roarke, two weeks since buried, rising from the grave on his own! By the end of the harrowing tale, Barnaby is surrounded by a crowd of dead soldiers and others, risen from their graves, and it looks like escape is impossible.

Just like with the first two books in the series, LEGION OF THE DEAD takes place in a fascinating city --- part Dickensian London, part Steam Punk imagination, full of odd characters and implausible events. Barnaby is dashing and heroic, smart and humble, and always unwittingly headed into trouble. Paul Stewart's prose is graphic and poetic, and Chris Riddell's illustrations are gory and lovely. However, the story takes too long to get underway and Barnaby seems to be in less imminent danger. While the plot is interesting (and is summarized nicely in the end just to make sure readers catch it all) and the framing of the action in the first chapter works well, overall there is more reliance on descriptions of disgusting rotting and violently mutilated corpses and not enough attention to the pace of the story and the development of the tale.

Still, this book will thrill many young readers, and Barnaby Grimes remains a unique and fun protagonist at the helm of a series that is exciting and wickedly entertaining.

5.0 out of 5 stars Fast action and intrigue abound, April 22, 2010

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Barnaby Grimes: Legion of the Dead (Hardcover)

Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell's BARNABY GRIMES: LEGION OF THE DEAD tells of corpses, a delivery boy who runs all over the city, and another Barnaby Grimes mystery revolving around zombies from the dead. Fast action and intrigue abound.

5.0 out of 5 stars Barnaby Grimes satisfies, March 30, 2010

By 

Lisa K. Savignano - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Barnaby Grimes: Legion of the Dead (Hardcover)

Barnaby Grimes is a Tick -Tock Lad, or messenger boy, so named because, "Tick- Tock, time is money." Barnaby is a Highstacker, delivering his messages over the top of the city, running and striding across the roofs, chimneys and smokestacks. Highstackers are the elite of the Tick-tock lads, as they make the most money because they can deliver faster than the purely ground-based boys, the Cobblestone Creepers.

When Barnaby runs into the dead body of Firejaw O'Roarke, a dead gang boss whose funeral he was invited to only a few days earlier, he's not in a position to be sure about what he's seeing- he had just been attacked by a Harbor Serpent during a job he was doing for a Professor friend, and wound up near the graveyard as the suit he was in floated away.

But after Barnaby recovers, he hears stories about other dead bodies, and is driven to investigate what is causing the dead to rise from the ground. What do they want, and who or what is raising them? More direly, how can they be returned to their graves?

I have been waiting a long time for this book, and as soon as I received it in the mail, I settled down to read it. I really enjoyed it. In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I read it right through in one sitting. Not only do I love the words in this book, but the images that accompany it. Barnaby in his coalstack hat, or Barnaby in the diving suit, the images of the student nurse that Barnaby finds in the hospital or the menace of the Legion of the Dead.

The writing nicely conveys both the dreariness of the lower city, and the beautiful views available to the Highstackers, along with the menace of other humans, and the otherworldly creepiness and horror of The Legion of the Dead- many of whom come from the city itself. And the pictures only add to a depiction of regular villainy and otherworldly horror. I loved reading this and can't wait until the next book comes out in may. Well worth reading. Recommended.