Festergrimm: 03/27/24

Festergrimm by Thomas Taylor (2022) is the fourth book in the Eerie-on-Sea children's series. Sebastian Eels is back and claims he is rebuilding the Festergrimm Waxwork Museum. Herbie and Violet suspect different, believing he wants to find Festergrimm's iron giant.

As much as I love this series, I am tired of Sebastian Eels being the big bad. He's tried so many different schemes and has been so thoroughly defeated that I'm shocked he's a) still alive and b) still welcome in the town by the adults in charge. But modern day series, especially those for children seem to be fixated on keeping things simple.

There's also a missed opportunity with Eel's reappearance. To prove his worth he goes to the bookshop to ask for a book from the mechanical monkey. The book that's apparently assigned to him is A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (1843). I really wanted Eels — this iteration of him — to be a humbug. It would have made things more interesting. Imagine having a new villain pretending to be an old one!

Instead, the children learn that the book was a plant. The actual recommended book is still on the shelves. It turns out to have some pivotal information. The children reading from it gives the author a chance to info-dump in long passages of italic text. Yawn. Honestly you can skip those pages as everything gets regurgitated in dialog.

Given my annoyance with pieces of the book, why the high rating? There's a darker side to this volume. The robot is genuinely scary. Not evil, just scary because of it's limited programming, huge size, power, obsessive directive, and the gruesome way in which it was rebuilt before being hidden.

Like the previous books, this one sits on the Road Narrative Spectrum. There's only a slight shift in position from the previous book, Shadowghast (2021). The travelers remain orphans. Their destination remains uhoria (their past and the village's past). What changes is their route: from the maze to the railway (FF) as represented both by the train that brings Eels back into town and by the ghost train ride associated with the waxworks.

The fifth book is Mermedusa (2023).

Four stars

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