Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Children’s, Teenage & Educational
Weblink
nethergrim.com

THE NETHERGRIM

Matthew Jobin

Ranger's Apprentice meets The Chronicles of Narnia in this action-packed middle grade fantasy series.

Decades have passed since the heroic knight Tristan and the famed wizard Vithric defeated the evil Nethergrim and his minions. Everyone in Moorvale knows the legend; songs are sung and festivals held in their heroes' honor. Yet now something dark has crept over the village. First animals disappear. Then something worse: children disappear. The whispers start quietly yet soon build to a shout: The Nethergrim has returned!
Edmund knows little of the Nethergrim. He just wants to study magic - for which his father berates him. They have a tavern to run and little time for nonsense. When Edmund's little brother disappears, though, Edmund and his best friends run away to battle an evil whose strength and power none of them can imagine.

By turns dramatic, heart-wrenching, and thrilling, Book 1 of this epic is fantasy-adventure at its best.

Matthew Jobin graduated from Stanford University with a PhD in anthropological science and is now a lecturer at the university. Not unlike Christopher Paolini, he created the fantasy world of The Nethergrim when he was a teenager, and has been honing it ever since. The Nethergrim is his first book.

Available products
Book Published 2014-04-08 by Philomel Books
Book Published 2014-04-08 by Philomel Books

Comments

. . . a refreshingly metaphysical take on magic, a believably dark setting filled with unusual threats, and a seductive and manipulative villain.

Debut author Jobin tells a riveting, slowly building story, and his rich, evocative writing style only adds to the package. Perfect for imaginative readers craving a hearty magical adventure.

Matthew Jobin creates such a magnificent world in his story that you cannot bring yourself to put the book down. I could compare it to J.R.R. Tolkien and yet even that does not do it justice!

Discovering a series like Ranger’s Apprentice or Alex Rider is mostly luck and good fortune, and years can go by in between the next great discovery. I hadn’t read more than a few chapters of Matthew Jobin’s manuscript to know that fortune was smiling on Philomel again. Like John Flanagan’s Ranger’s Apprentice epic, THE NETHERGRIM is more than just a standard fantasy-adventure of good vs. evil; it is a world built from the soil up, a land and a people with a history as rich as that soil, and characters as three-dimensional as any you’ll encounter in life. Like the Chronicles of Narnia, the fantasy elements are steeped in mythology and spirituality, with humble heroes and villains of shocking complexity. The combination makes for a stunningly self-assured debut.

Dutch (all three books): Gottmer Uitgevers Groep, Hebrew: Kor'im Publishing House, Polish (all three books): Wydawnictwo Jaguar SC

This series starter is reminiscent of epic fantasy series such as C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia or J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.

The Nethergrim reminded me of a cross between The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter.

Fantasy fans will find much to enjoy in this elegant gem of a novel . . .