Review: The Enchantress Returns

Title:  The Enchantress Returns
Author:  Chris Colfer
Series:  The Land of Stories [2]
Rating:  5/5


Summary:

After decades of hiding, the evil Enchantress who cursed Sleeping Beauty is back with a vengeance.

Alex and Conner Bailey have not been back to the magical Land of Stories since their adventures in The Wishing Spell ended. But one night, they learn the famed Enchantress has kidnapped their mother! Against the will of their grandmother, the twins must find their own way into the Land of Stories to rescue their mother and save the fairy tale world from the greatest threat it's ever faced.

Review:

I waited desperately for this book to come out and when it did I only got 20 pages in before I had to put it down!  It's not because I didn't like it though, it's because school refuses to let me read (did I ever mention law school is a horrible, terrible experience?  Because it is).  So anyway, I picked the book back up over my winter break and finished it as fast as I could.

Once I was allowed to pick it up I couldn't put it down!  I'm not huge on the fantasy world, but I'm a sucker for old time fairy tales and this series keeps so true to them, but with a modern spin that I love them.

At first I was apprehensive about the storyline.  Were we going to spend an entire book on another quest to create a mystical thing that may or may not exist?  Why yes actually.  That worried me immediately.  I liked the first book, and the quest and meeting all the storybook characters, but could Chris Colfer really hold my attention by doing something remarkably similar for another 500 pages?  Answer:  Yes he can.

I think I like most about this book how introspective the characters got without being obvious about it.  The characters questing, and the ones they ran into, learned life lessons (like any good fairy tale makes them do) and yet at the same time it wasn't pushed in your face repeatedly.  For example, statements like this one were peppered throughout the book:

“Anyone can have a once-upon-a-time or a happily-ever-after, but it's the journey between that makes the story worth telling.” 

So despite the fact that this is a juvenile book (i.e. located in the juvenile fiction section of the library) I would recommend it to people of [nearly] all ages.

I give it:

[Also, thank you to Little Bookworm Reviews for pointing me in the right direction to create quote boxes!  And has any fellow bloggers experienced blogger running slowly when trying to write a post lately?  It doesn't like to let me save.]