Needs More Love: The Edge Chronicles
So a long, long time ago, maybe about five years ago, I was wandering through the kids' section of the local library, just kinda looking around for any good books, and I come across this book called Beyond the Deepwoods. "There's, like, a guy with pointy ears and a giant furry animal with big freaking tusks! This must be awesome!" says my younger self.
So I flipped through the book casually and realized there were accompanying illustrations. "Illustrations? Hell yeah, illustrations! I'm checking out the first three books of this series!" (Although younger me would be a bit less profane.) And thus, I was introduced to The Edge Chronicles by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell, which now consists of three trilogies centered around one specific character, plus two accompanying novels (one novel and one short story anthology).
After a while, I read all the books that had come out at the time (there were eight - I still vaguely remember that scene in The Winter Knights when Quint enters the Academy while crawling on his hands and knees. Of course, I could be completely wrong - it's been five years) and kind of fell out of interest and forgot about it. Then after seeing The Immortals, the newest book in the series in all of its Doorstopper glory, then finding the trope page on the series, then seeing the series in the school library, I decided to just go "Screw it" and check out all ten books in the series.
It's still pretty damn awesome.
The world is fleshed-out and beautifully illustrated with Riddell's ink drawings, there are craptons of creatures, varying from cool to creepy (and in the case of a few, a combination of both), the characters have their flaws and problems and overcome those problems, usually with their own skills, and while it is still a kids' book series, it's a nice read from Nostalgialand for me, and I'd recommend reading the first two books (Beyond The Deepwoods and Stormchaser, respectfully) if you look into this series and decide you want to try it.
Why the first two? They have different style. BTD is written only from the main character, Twig's (it's a long story) perspective. It has a basic plot: orphaned child raised by a different species from his own gets lost in the woods, comes across a wide variety of creatures, finds his destiny. Stormchaser is where the books stop being from just one character's POV and be less about the creatures and more about the plot, with the number of plot threads increasing. Your Mileage May Vary on which style is better - personally, Stormchaser is my second favorite book after Curse of the Gloamglozer.
Speaking of which. These books have their fair share of Nightmare Fuel, not uncommon for a kids' illustrated book series. For example, take the Twilight Woods. The Twilight Woods are a section of the Edge, where everything takes place - it's basically the edge of the world. Anyways, the Twilight Woods. Basically, it's an alluring place that, if you hang out too long in it or get lost or something, makes you go insane. Oh, and your body starts decomposing after a while, but you don't die. So basically, there's frickin' undead that are batcrap crazy hanging out in there. And you can become one of them ever-so-easily.
Yeah. Creepy for the younger me to read about, especially with accompanying illustrations showing, in loving detail, a decaying, almost-skeletal knight (long story). Oh, and then there's the gloamglozer, as previously mentioned. I don't want to talk much about it. -shudder-
So yeah. The Edge Chronicles, a series that needs a lot more love and that I'd highly recommend. One final note, though. It's nice how the books, which were originally published in the United Kingdom, keep the formatting of one quotation marks around stuff characters are saying, and two around stuff the character is describing another character saying. For example:
'Blah blah blah, and then he said, "Blah blah blah blah," and I've never been so insulted!'
In the US, the format is the opposite - two quotation marks around what a character is saying and one around what a character is describing another character saying. The Edge Chronicles keep their quotations marks, though, along with the UK spelling of words like "color/colour" (although I never pay much attention to that, so I'm not sure).
So, erm. Yeah. Don't really know what else to say.
