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Book Review: Trollhunters By Guillermo del Toro & Daniel Kraus
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Trollhunters
Hardcover | Paperback | Kindle Edition | Audiobook
Written by Guillermo del Toro & Daniel Kraus
Illustrated by Sean Murray
Jacket by E.M. Gist
Disney-Hyperion
Release Date: July 7, 2015

“You are food.” The very first line of Trollhunters provides the motive for the entire novel. Humans are historically food for trolls, but most have evolved to an animal diet, in their natural habitat under bridges and underground. Some, however, still had the taste for human parts.

In 1969, at the height of the Milk Carton epidemic, the Sturges brothers were riding their bikes, soon to be headed home. Then Jack and his younger brother Jim had to be home before dark. It was a dangerous time with all the missing children. They were racing their bikes and all of a sudden, Jack was gone, joining the Milk Carton kids. Jim was never the same.

More reviewing and a video from Guillermo del Toro here below.

Cut to present day. Jim and Jim Jr. (Jimmy) live under self-imposed lock and key. Ten long locks, house alarm, steel shutters, and more keep the bad out of the house. Jim is a broken man, having never gotten over the death of “the bravest kid he ever saw.”

Pacific Rim director del Toro (who also wrote The Strain novels) and Daniel Kraus (Rotters, Scowler) penned this YA novel about an unlikely group of heroes taking down the vilest and most evil of trolls to save mankind.

This book was pure addiction from beginning to end. The authors’ voices spoke to 14-year-old me, taking me on a Goonies-esque adventure. It’s a classic underdog story: two loser kids (by high school standards), one crazy kid, a Blinky, and an Arghh!! The imagery was super descriptive:

“I raised the gallbladder in a victorious fist. It was the size of a golf ball and the texture of wet spinach. It rolled in my hand as if it were filled with maggots.”

How’s that for a visual?

The human/troll battle scenes only needed some inspirational music to come from the book to make them complete. I got tired merely from reading about the physical exhaustion. I mean, how does one troll hunt all night, and maintain a day life of school, play rehearsals, and Tub? I needed a nap just thinking about it.

I enjoyed it, and I’m giving it to my 11-year-old to read. It’s good for all.

Official book synopsis:

“You are food. Those muscles you flex to walk, lift, and talk? They’re patties of meat topped with chewy tendon. That skin you’ve paid so much attention to in mirrors? It’s delicious to the right tongues, a casserole of succulent tissue. And those bones that give you the strength to make your way in the world? They rattle between teeth as the marrow is sucked down slobbering throats. These facts are unpleasant but useful. There are things out there, you see, that don’t cower in holes to be captured by us and cooked over our fires. These things have their own ways of trapping their kills, their own fires, their own appetites.”

Jim Sturges is your typical teen in suburban San Bernardino-one with an embarrassingly overprotective dad, a best friend named “Tubby” who shares his hatred of all things torturous (like gym class), and a crush on a girl who doesn’t know he exists. But everything changes for Jim when a 45-year old mystery resurfaces, threatening the lives of everyone in his seemingly sleepy town. Soon Jim has to team up with a band of unlikely (and some un-human) heroes to battle the monsters he never knew existed.

From the minds of Guillermo del Toro and Daniel Kraus comes a new illustrated novel about the fears that move in unseen places.

FUN FACT: It was reported in 2009 and 2010 that del Toro was working on a movie version of Trollhunters. It’s not clear if he’ll still be making that movie.

Video

TROLLHUNTERS by Guillermo del Toro and Daniel Kraus

Cover

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