WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS!

7^th Grade and Up

Brystal Evergreen is running out of time. It’s been almost a year since she made a deal with Death to find and destroy the Immortal in exchange for her life. But she still hasn’t found a single clue about who or where the Immortal is. To make matters worse, something dark and malignant has risen from deep within the earth, threatening life as we know it. To stop this new evil, the fairies and witches must work with all the kingdoms and territories, including the Righteous Brotherhood and their Army of the Dead. But is the threat more familiar than they expected? And why are a secretive group of Sorcerers convinced Xanthous Hayfield is connected to it?

It amazes me how many worlds Chris Colfer has created over his writing career and he’s created even more for this book. I didn’t think this series could get any more complex but it has. So many new characters are introduced along with so many subplots filled with so many intricate details. Trying to keep everything straight made my head hurt. I’m not even going to try to explain all that happens in this story. It’s just too much.

The one thing I can talk about are the characters. Chris Colfer sure has a knack for creating characters with different personalities and quirks. Lucy Goose is ariot and I love Stitches’s (a witch introduced in Book 2) morbid one-liners. But he’s really broken the mold on one particular new character: Gobzella, the strongest and loudest warrior the goblins have ever known. You have to listen to the audiobook for Gobzella alone. Her dialogue doesn’t have the same impact when read. You have to HEAR IT!

Bit of a spoiler alert: One of the many subplots includes Xanthous off on his own and meeting an elf boy and starting a relationship with him. Usually I’m not a fan of romance stories of any kind but these two are so sweet together that they melted my heart. I like romance better when it’s not the main subject of a story and is more like ‘Hey! This is also happening!”

Be on the lookout for a big reference to Book 3 of The Land of Stories. Leave a comment below if you know what it is. Hint: It’s about bubbles.

I am happy to say that this story does not end on a huge cliffhanger. But I am sad to say that I don’t know if this series will continue. But even if this series is ending, we have The Land of Stories movie to look forward to. Chris Colfer hasn’t mentioned the movie in a while but I hope it’s in progress. If it’s a live-action movie, the special effects alone will take years. And Chris Colfer better be acting/or doing voices, or I’m going to be very disappointed with the whole movie. As long as he’s running the movie, I’m sure it will be great.