Book review: The Grimmelings – Rachael King (Allen & Unwin, $24.99)

Rachael King's novel, The Grimmelings, is a thrilling story full of adventure and magic.

WARDINI BOOK REVIEW

Ella and her little sister Fiona live way down in the South Island of Aotearoa with their mother Morag and grandmother Griselda who they call Grizly.

Morag runs a horse trekking business but the family is ostracised from their local community with rumours of “witchiness” swirling around them.

The husbands of both Grizly and Morag drowned in the nearby lake and Fiona has an other-worldliness to her that makes her an easy target for bullies. When one of the bullies, Josh, goes missing, heads turn in their direction and Ella meets a newcomer to the area, Gus.

Ella’s own horse, Magpie, is just as strange as the rest of the family, her small, un-horselike ears and grumpy mood with anyone but Ella making her an oddity.

When Gus comes visiting Magpie is wary but Ella, lonely and in need of friendship, is bedazzled by his cheeky grin.

Grizly is dying from cancer and Ella and Fiona spend as much time with her as possible, listening to tales of Scottish mythology from Grizly’s home country about which they know little.

When a huge black stallion begins to haunt the area Grizly’s past seems to catch up with her and the girls are drawn in to a family curse that haunts their nightmares and waking hours.

Grizly has a word hoard, a grimoire of old Scottish words including the grimmeling: the first or last gleams of the day, and she feeds these words to Ella and to the reader so that we have a magical vocabulary through which to explore the landscape.

When the world’s undersong, the chirrups and creaks and hums of the natural world, quietens and the horses freeze we know that danger is coming.

There is real danger on every page of this book. The faerie realm threatens with the worst kind of mischief and the thin veil between life and death haunts the family.

Malevolence, terror, bravery and sacrifice make this a thrilling ride for readers of about 10 and up.