Grymm

by Keith Austin

Something stirred in the gravelly yard beneath their window . . . A soft slippery nuzzle, the sort of sounds you'd expect a pig to make with its snout in a trough . . . The small mining town of GRYMM perched on the very edge of the Great Desert is the kind of town you leave - but when Dad gets a three-month contract in the mine there, Mina and Jacob, unwilling stepbrother and sister, are reluctantly arriving.

From a grotesque letting agent who seems to want to eat their baby brother, a cafe owner whose milkshakes contain actual maggots and the horribly creepy butcher, baker and candlestick-maker, Mina and Jacob soon realize that nothing in GRYMM is what is appears to be. And then things get seriously weird when their baby brother disappears - and no one seems to even notice! In Grymm, your worst nightmares really do come true . . .

400 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2012

About the author

After attending Parmiter's Grammar School in East London, Keith worked in a local pie, mash and eel shop for two years before joining the East London Advertiser newspaper at the age of 20. After working in East London, Oxford, and Essex, he eventually made it to Fleet Street when he joined The Sunday Times in London.

After stints at the Daily Mirror and the China Daily newspaper in Beijing, he emigrated to Australia in 1994 and stayed for 28 years, working on the Sydney Morning Herald and then becoming a freelance travel writer. It was while in Australia that the inspiration struck him to write the YA horror story GRYMM.

Keith returned to the UK in 2022 and then relocated to Albania for a few months to write FART CLOWNS, his 4th - and most outrageous - YA book (coming soon!).

Reviews

[WJ · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mina and Jacob are extremely reluctant step-siblings. Jacob thinks that Mina is a wannabe-Goth who's obsessed with boys while Mina thinks that Jacob is a whiny little boy who has a weird green bag that he totes around as a security blanket. But what both siblings agree is that their little brother, spawned from the relationship between their parents, is the worst thing ever. Baby Brian is an obnoxious crying machine with a constant pooping problem who they can't stand.

When their family relocates to the town of Grymm for their father's job, Mina and Jacob are freaked out by what they find. Their real estate agent cooes over Brian but seems like a witch who's keen to have Brian for dinner. The owners of the local stores are all extremely strange people: the butcher is blood-thirsty, there are maggots placed in the milkshakes and the children can't help but to feel like they're being watched by something. When their little brother disappears overnight, with their parents not noticing his disappearance at all, Mina and Jacob are convinced that they have stumbled into a nightmare and are determined to get their brother back at all costs, even if it means having to go up against the town's evil.

Grymm has a really great message behind it: about facing evil and learning to get along as a family unit. Unfortunately the execution leaves a lot to be desired. And this has nothing to do with the fact that I'm not the intended audience for the book, because I've read other children's books before like The Night Gardener (which has some similar themes about moving into an eerie place where siblings must stick together) which I really enjoyed. The problem with this book is that the pacing is rather slow, with about three-quarters of the book being devoted to the children discovering all the strangeness of the town. It's only in the last quarter where things are pieced together, but even then the action is lackluster and there's a huge plot hole because we aren't told why specifically Mina and Jacob's family are drawn to the town. Why get their family to relocate there?

I will say that certain parts of the book really grossed me out though, because the details can be pretty graphic. So don't read this book while having a meal or you would really regret it.

[Sarah Shrubb · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of good things in here, but way too long, and the basic plot pretty unbelievable. Which for me did not fit well with how real the main characters are. Like most YA books, it is about learning to deal with oneself and other people, and this one trod a very traditional line here: blended family, two kids trying to manage begin being each other, plus new baby they both loathe. This being the only thing they agree on. Move to weird outback town full of strange people and strange goings on.

But it never sorts out the strangeness properly because it has made it too extreme, too non-human. So none of the plot worked for me. And the ending is utterly predictable, of course. So, disappointed, and won't be reading more from him.

[Tanya Grech Welden · Rating 4 out of 5]

Grymm is set in the desert town of the same name. Once a thriving hub for the mining industry, the gold deposits have since dried up, leaving Grymm as a fading ghost town. Jacob and Mina, step-siblings with a distinct lack of appreciation for one another, land in Grymm with their parents and half-baby brother Bryan. From the moment they arrive they have an inkling that things in Grymm are not quite as they first seem. It doesn’t take long before their hunch is confirmed by the sudden disappearance of their baby brother.

The outback desert town Austin has created is darkly mysterious, and every bit as sinister as a Transylvanian-esque village in the European mountains might be. On many levels the town is quite stereotypical; although I did appreciate his hints to the Aboriginal Dreaming and the proliferation of flies that suggested something more Australian. Grymm includes a host of vividly drawn characters, all equally grotesque in their own way. Of particular note was the cross-dressing Maggot (who likes to add maggots to milkshakes), the larger than life baker Fleur, (who may or may not want to add the children to his latest creation), and Real Estate agent Thespa, (a voluminously hideous woman that conceals a heart of gold or possibly a taste for infants?). Also of note was the local butcher Cleaver Flay who was reminiscent of another insane butcher from film history, Clapet from Jeunet and Caro’s French cinematic masterpiece Delicatessen (1991). As with any great Horror/Gothic tale what is needed is the evil antagonist who must act as the Master Puppeteer. This role is taken by the insidious Anhanga, who despite living up to my expectations, was introduced to the story a little too late for my liking.

A vividly drawn Gothic-Horror title with a dash of Steampunk thrown in for good measure. I highly recommend Keith Austin’s Grymm for a delectable read on a dark night. Word of warning; this title is best consumed without food.

For more great reviews please head over to www.ozbooks4teachers.com.au

[Sophie · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I started reading the first few chapters of Grymm, I was hooked. It was different and really quite scary in parts. I read through the first third of the book at some speed. Some of the descriptions are very effective, and there was a particular moment, involving a milkshake, that almost made me sick. Bleurgh. Unfortunately, the book started to drag after that. The sinister element soon seemed watered down and the plot started to fell a little bit lost; it was almost as though the writer forgot what the aim of the story was and just lumped some stories together.

[Sera]

Crap - not worth my time - binned it