When Jim Sturges finally met his long lost Uncle Jack, he didn’t expect it to be in an underground lair filled with trolls. He didn’t expect Uncle Jack to have barely aged and still be roughly the same age as Jim himself, wearing armor made of cast off junk, and wielding a pair of deadly blades. Nor did he expect that he, his best friend Tub, and a pair of trolls would have to accompany Jack on a week long race against time to stop Gunmar the Black, a human eating troll of ages past, from rising to conquer the surface world.
Still, that’s exactly what happens to Jim Sturges. As if he didn’t have enough problems, with a fate determining math test looming, the whims of the school bully to evade, and a role in the upcoming production of Romeo and Juliet to prepare for. Throw in an overly protective father who arms their house with steel shudders, cameras, and ten locks on every door, and you might say Jim Sturges has a complicated week ahead of him.
For those of you who are unaware, “Trollhunters” is the novel that spawned the Netflix TV series of the same name. That’s actually how I became interested in reading the book. I watched and greatly enjoyed the show first. It isn’t often that I go into a book having seen the show/movie first, so it’s always an odd experience when I do.
In this case, I have to say something I very rarely say about book adaptations. I actually liked the show better.
Which is not to say that this isn’t a good book. It certainly is. I simply found the characters in the Netflix version much more interesting.
Jim Sturges in the book is your garden variety, bad at gym nerd who, while sympathetic, is somewhat vanilla as heroes go. Jim Sturges on the show had some things that really made him memorable from the start. His amazing culinary skills, his unique relationship with his MD mother and other characters on the show. I just had an easier time connecting with that version of the character and really getting immersed in his story.
The same can really be said of the many of the characters as well. But I’ll try to steer clear of show/book comparisons from here and just focus on what I thought about the book on its own.
The plot definitely draws you in with the severity of its stakes. While most trolls long ago gave up feasting on humans to bring peace between the two species, a large group of them who insisted on continuing to dine on humanity are raising an army and preparing to march on the surface. To bring their leader, Gunmar the Black, back to full strength, the trolls are kidnapping children across town to grind up in “the Machine” and feed to him.
With only a few days before the device that can transport Gunmar to the surface is completed, Jim and Jack have quite the task on their hands.
One place where the book really shines is in the relationship between Jim and Tub. While Tub does play the role of sidekick to the fantasy hero, the rocky ground their friendship ends up on is well portrayed and really makes you feel for both characters even more.
Some of the other character relationships didn’t speak to me as much. Jim and his over-protective father just didn’t work for me for some reason, for example.
The pacing of the book is a bit too fast, overall, which leads to the world building feeling a lot sparser than it is. There’s a lot of interesting things going on here that I would have liked to take a closer look at, but given that the book was aimed at younger teens I can understand why they chose the pace they did.
Overall, while “Trollhunters” is an enjoyable read and worth the time, I would probably only recommend it to those who already watched and enjoyed the show. This one gets a solid three out of five stars from me.
