Customer Reviews

The Wyrm King (Beyond the Spiderwick Chronicles)

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Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi's Beyond the Spiderwick Chronicles series somehow hasn't grasped me as tightly as their original series of teeny tiny, hauntingly eerie fantasy books. But the spinoff series roars to a satisfying conclusion with its third book, "The Wyrm King" -- while the frenetic pace is a bit confusing, it's a nicely gory, bizarre and intricate story.

Because of their kids' bizarre behavior, Laurie and Nick's respective parents decide to temporarily separate -- and though this is what Nick wanted once, he doesn't want it now.

But he hasn't got the time to be confused, because massive sinkholes are appearing all over their Florida city -- with something snakey inside. Suspecting something weird is up, Nick and his brother Jules join up with Laurie and the three Grace kids, and soon discovers that their new enemy is a sort of "wyrm king" (like a rat king, with the tails all joined together), which resembles the mythical hydra. They even find three tiny salamander-like creatures with one tail.

Unfortunately, Nick soon finds that his old promises and actions are starting to trip him up, and he's losing the trust of the various faery creatures around him. Their only hope to stop the sinkholes is to set the wyrms' natural enemy on them -- the giants, who have been sleeping in the sea. But lurking somewhere in the city is the ultimate enemy of the giants -- a monster that even they may not be able to destroy.

While the Beyond the Spiderwick Chronicles started off rather blandly (especially compared to the first series), "The Wyrm King" is a solid grand finale -- plenty of fire-spewing giants, monstrous dragon-things, and the ground collapsing as monsters hatch underground. And while the back cover proclaims "It's over!", the door is left wide open for Black and DiTerlizzi to continue the series someday.

And Black and DiTerlizzi do a solid job plotting out a fast-paced adventure story that ties up various plot threads (the nixies, Jack Jr's giant-hunting), without losing its focus on the disgusting methane-breathing dragonets. Black's writing gives a genuinely magical atmosphere to the mundane Floridian setting, and provides the faery world with a sense of beauty and danger ("their long fins seeming to float, their scaly bodies lashing the water languorously").

And they weave in plenty of exciting scenes -- car chases (by a giant), Nick being briefly eaten, a brief exquisite trip into the underwater world of the merpeople, and a vaguely Lovecraftian climax. The biggest flaw with the book is that the frenetic pace gets a bit confusing at times.

Nick spends much of this book dealing with the consequences of his actions and his various ill-chosen promises, as well as the fragmentation of his new blended family (turns out he doesn't want it as much as he once claimed). But despite his errors, he eventually shows his mettle as a hero. Laurie serves as a solid female lead, and Mallory, Simon and Jared serve as a solid trio of faery-fighting veterans.

Though it started a bit limply, the Beyond The Spiderwick Chronicles series ends on a solid, action-packed note with "The Wyrm King." And there's still plenty of room for further adventures in this world.

this book is the best out of all of them it's full of action there's hydras, giants, merfolk,and nixies it is awesome buy it and read it!

Nick's punishment after being out all night with Jules and Laurie is the worst imaginable. His dad, who blames himself for their problems, hauls the entire family off to a counselor. The counselor insists they call her by her first name, wears her long gray hair in a multi-braided hairdo, and decorates her office with crystals, mood music and a big box of tissues. She also wants to "maintain positive spiritual energy" during their session. While "Teresa" yammers on, Nick is sunk deep in his own gloomy thoughts, pondering the fact that he had thought he was being heroic with the giant situation; instead, he managed to make everything unbelievably worse.

But Nick tunes back in when he hears Charlene and his dad exchanging barbs about their children. And he is appalled when his father and stepmother announce they think the family will be happier if they separate temporarily. Although Nick and Jules apologize and ask them to stay together, their folks insist. On their way home, their dad must stop the car to avoid a tremendous sinkhole, which Jules and Nick believe indicates an ominous problem, especially after they call the authorities and learn there have been multiple reports of sinkholes. And, of course, there are those awful snake-like appendages Nick is almost sure he glimpsed creeping out from the sinkhole.

When Nick searches for news about sinkholes in Florida on his computer, his worst suspicions are confirmed. Sinkholes have appeared everywhere, and the world is about to be destroyed. Noseeum Jack is gone, and all the other adults are totally clueless. That means it is up to Nick and the others to save the world. But can they? He gathers the troops: Laurie (along with her little faerie, Sandspur), Jared, Simon and Mallory. When they approach the sinkhole, a dangerous situation immediately develops, with one member of their group in extreme peril. Soon they are face to face with something much more horrifying than giants.

As more (monster-populated) sinkholes appear and spread, Nick and his friends know they must take drastic action immediately, since time is running out. Nick believes he should persuade the nixies to sing as part of a solution, but in order to do that, he makes them a promise that leads him into a terrifying situation on top of a surfboard in the middle of the ocean.

Plentifully illustrated with wonderful drawings, THE WYRM KING by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black is a dazzling capper to the series, complete with a twist-and-turn plot, crazy scrapes with wild solutions, and an easily digested theme about the way humans can interfere with the environment to the detriment of all, even when they believe they're being helpful. The family issues strike a note of reality with which many readers can identify, and the fantasy and adventure are imaginative and enjoyable.

--- Reviewed by Terry Miller Shannon

I love the Spiderwick books. I'm not ashamed to say it even though I don't think they had 40 year olds in mind when creating them. I'm sad to see them end. I hope Holly and Tony will return to them in the future. These books are great all ages fantasy but I felt the original series was a little better than this one.

I finished this book with a sense of the bitter sweet. Sweet because it was the conclusion to a great trilogy. But bitter because it hints that there will be no more books in the Spiderwick world. It is the last book in the Beyond the Spiderwick Chronicles trilogy, and the last of 11 books set in the Spiderwick world. What I loved about the afterward by Black and DiTerlizzi was that they encourage others to tell more tales of the fantastical, and we should start seeing books written in homage to these books, exploring and expanding upon the magical, mythological and adventuresome nature of these books.

At the end of the last book there was a forewarning that the Giants had a purpose. Now, it seems very obvious what that purpose was. Huge sink holes are spreading all over the Florida coastline, and most people are assuming it is a new natural disaster. But both the Vargas and Grace children are racing time to try to save Florida and possibly all of North America from a new threat from the fairy world. This story has great adventure, some mishaps and a few surprising twists. It is a great conclusion to an amazing series of books.

My ten-year-old is a struggling reader in fourth grade. He loves to be read to but not by himself. He loves this series so much that I have caught him up in the middle of the night reading. THANK YOU!

The Chronicles are great and I can hardly wait to read them to my granddaughter. This volume brings to a conclusion the series. The language is vivid and the pace is good enough for pre-teen and older. I want to find out for myself how the series "flies" while read to little ones (under 6). The violence is no more than found in other original fairy tales and fables. The characters' inner conflicts and parental struggles are realistic and woven into the story line with skill. I'm a believer in "fairy tales" contributing to healthy child development. If you are too then try this series.

I ordered this book for my 10 year old grandson. We enjoy reading aloud to each other and this book was a good conclusion to the Beyond Spiderwick series. The plot was engaging enough for us both and the vocabulary was just about right for him without being to "Mickey Mouse" for me. Even though we know its a fantasy series, we were glad to be living in WNY instead of south FL, in spite of the snow!No possibility of giants and hydras here!

The third and final part of Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi's collaborative effort is called "The Wyrm King," following on from The Nixie's Song and A Giant Problem, part of the "Beyond the Spiderwick Chronicles" trilogy which in turn is a sequel to the original The Spiderwick Chronicles series (why are fantasy titles so convoluted?) and which wraps up the trilogy in a satisfying, action-picked finale.

Centered on the plump eleven-year old Nick Vargas, his older brother Jules and their unwanted stepsister Laurie, the three siblings spent the better part of the last book trying to remove giants from Mr Vargas's housing development, only to find that their successful attempt to lead the giants into the ocean has only led to more trouble. The climactic finish of the previous book was the discovery that the giants were the only things keeping an even greater danger at bay, one that is now rising up from the swamplands. (As a warning against tampering with the natural order of things, could this plot element be an ecological message that's actually...*subtle*?!)

Along with the Grace siblings (Mallory, Jared and Simon, the protagonists from the previous books) Nick and his assorted team of faerie-experts try to gather all the information they can on the mysterious wyrms that are emerging from the sink-holes currently appearing across town. Like giant multi-headed eels that merge together like the mythological hydra, the creatures grow at a rapid pace and breathe out methane gas, and with the loss of Noseeum Jack (this trilogy's version of Aunt Lucinda), the kids feel completely out of their league.

To make matters more complicated, the martial issues between Nick's dad and Laurie's mother have reached breaking point. Deciding to temporarily separate for the sake of their children, Nick finally gets his wish only to discover that he's not particularly happy with the idea of Laurie leaving his life. As with the previous series, the plot of the troubled family is reflected in the faerie aspect of things as the children deal with irreversible change, working together, making the most of what they've got, and getting a taste of adult life in their dealings with the imminently selfish faeries.

Nick himself makes a great protagonist; like most kids his age and in his situation, he simply doesn't know what he wants, and a general theme of decision-making and promise-keeping is sustained throughout his story. As such, the other characters are slightly more low-key this time around, as Nick takes centre stage.

The two major differences in this trilogy as opposed to the five-part original series is the change in setting and the general theme of the story. We've moved from the old-world charm of Maine to the mangrove swamps and beaches of Florida, the home of illustrator Tony DiTerlizzi. Something is a bit lost in the transition; namely the fairytale-esque feel of the Spiderwick mansion and the surrounding meadows and forests. Although the seaside additions of mermaids, nixies and giants put the world of faerie in a more balmy atmosphere and give the series a wider scope, I have to admit that I preferred the previous setting.

Also worth noting is that the "Beyond the Spiderwick" trilogy is more of an action-driven story than a tale of discovery. Whereas the Grace siblings partook in a battle between good and evil in which knowledge (in the form of the Field-Guide) was power; Nick and his siblings are part of a desperate attempt to save their community from natural upheaval. It doesn't pack quite the same impact.

But as always, the book itself is a treat, packed full of maps, supplementary material, and Tony DiTerlizzi's gorgeous illustrations. Some aspects of the plot are a bit wonky (to get the giants to the serpents, why didn't they just use the tape recording of the nixies as they did last time? And since the faeries' activities are on a much larger scale this time, I wasn't entirely sure what exactly those that did not have the Sight were actually experiencing when giants and serpents rampaged across the countryside) yet this is ultimately a satisfying conclusion to an innovative series that harks back to the darker side of fairytales. I hope Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi have more to come.

Like the earlier Spiderwick series, this chapter was good. I think the readers here preferred the earlier books; but quoted this one as quite good too.