Wildwood Imperium (Wildwood Chronicles Series #3)

by Colin Meloy, Carson Ellis (Illustrator), Colin Meloy (Read by)

Overview

A young girl's midnight séance awakens a long-slumbering malevolent spirit . . .

A band of runaway orphans allies with an underground collective of saboteurs and plans a daring rescue of their friends, imprisoned in the belly of an industrial wasteland . . .

Two old friends draw closer to their goal of bringing together a pair of exiled toy makers in order to reanimate a mechanical boy prince . . .

As the fate of Wildwood hangs in the balance.

The third book in the Wildwood Chronicles is a rich, moving, and dazzling story, by turns funny and profound. Both Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis are at the height of their gifts with Wildwood Imperium.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062047106
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	02/04/2014
Series:	Wildwood Chronicles Series , #3
Edition description:	Unabridged
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 5.70(h) x 1.20(d)
Age Range:	9 - 12 Years

About the Author

Colin Meloy is the writer of the bestselling Wildwood Chronicles and the singer and songwriter for the band the Decemberists. The Golden Thread is his first picture book. He once joined Pete Seeger onstage, singing American folk standards at the Newport Folk Festival in 2011, and even now, he can barely believe it actually happened, it was so cool. He lives just outside Portland, Oregon, with his family.

Carson Ellis is the illustrator of a number of books for children, including the Wildwood Chronicles, and is the author and illustrator of the picture books Du Iz Tak?, a Caldecott Honor winner, and Home. Carson lives just outside Portland, Oregon, with her family.

Colin Meloy is the writer of the bestselling Wildwood Chronicles and the singer and songwriter for the band the Decemberists. The Golden Thread is his first picture book. He once joined Pete Seeger onstage, singing American folk standards at the Newport Folk Festival in 2011, and even now, he can barely believe it actually happened, it was so cool. He lives just outside Portland, Oregon, with his family.

Editorial Reviews

05/01/2014
Gr 4–7—Prue McKeel knows she must unite the two engineers to bring back the automaton Prince Alexei, but she is not sure why the Council Tree gave this order. With one maker found, Prue searches for the second, while Elsie and Rachel work to free their friends from the titans of industry. Meanwhile, Curtis is trying to keep the Wildwood Bandit name thriving, even though it is just him and Septimus. With her return to South Wood, Prue expects to see a better world, not one controlled by the Synod, a group that worships the Blighted Tree. When Wildwood and all of the Impassable Wilderness is threatened by the return of the Dowager Governess, Prue must rescue the bandits, find the makers, and restore Alexie, all while trying to keep the protective boundary intact. Prue and her friends learn the true meaning of sacrifice and the power of forgiveness. With smart dialogue and excellent world-building, Meloy, as author and narrator, develops each character's personality and gives dimension and depth to his words. The author shows the struggle of revolution and the uncertainty that occurs in the early stages of remaking a world, drawing from the violence of the French and Russian Revolutions as well as providing terrific fantasy elements. This latest installment (after Under Wildwood) is an excellent addition to the series.—Sarah Flood, Breckinridge County Public Library, Hardinsburg, KY

School Library Journal - Audio

03/01/2014
Gr 5–8—Wildwood's varied cast of characters gathers once again. Prue, the Oregonian outsider whose "Bicycle Revolution" toppled a repressive government, now obeys the Council Tree, which prophesies that peace will come if engineers Esben and Carol Grod awaken the Dowager Governess's mechanical son. Add the Unadoptable children, the tyrant of the Industrial Waste, the fate of Curtis and the Bandit King, the power hungry Verdant Empress, and the crumbling interim Wildwood government, and the result, ending with reunions and rescues, requires notetaking to keep the details straight. Meloy uses a Dickensian style of alternating chapters to interleaf more than five concurrent story lines. Readers will need to be familiar with the previous books. There is little recapitulation of past events here, and chapter transitions can be confusing. Character development necessarily takes a backseat to events, although the unhinged Jeoffrey Unthank's dramatic reappearance is a delightful cameo. Prue's quest, while important, doesn't seem to personally resonate with her, and there's not much space given to her feelings on the matter. Given the challenging scope of this work, however, Meloy reunites his characters in a manner most of the series readers will find satisfying.—Caitlin Augusta, Stratford Library Association, CT

School Library Journal

★ 2013-11-20
Drawing from wildly original tropes and paradigms and populated by a wide cast of characters old and new, this portrait of a magical world just outside mundane reality (here represented by Portland, Ore.) brings the trilogy to a satisfying conclusion. The opening strikes a somber note as a teenage girl calls up a restless spirit then lightens, turning to Prue and her quest: bringing together toymakers Carol and Esben to rebuild their remarkable mechanical boy. But first, Rachel, Elsie and the valiant Unadoptables must rescue Carol and Martha from the Titan tower, a fiendishly complicated task that depends on the now highly unstable Joffrey Unthank and the Chapeaux Noirs, an "anarcho-syndicalist" collective. Dramatic shifts in tone and mood--by turns politically astute and subversively witty, elegiac, droll and philosophical--are par for the course, while narrative style ranges from intimate to intergalactically distant. These idiosyncrasies make it just about impossible to identify the prospective audience by age. Never mind. Series fans know what awaits, and new readers will quickly determine if it's for them. Interwoven with Meloy's compellingly visual word portraits, Ellis' abundant illustrations, including color plates, again showcase her subtle blend of folk-art simplicity and eldritch imagery. Like filmmaker Terry Gilliam, Meloy gives his antic imagination full rein to produce work that, if occasionally uneven, is brilliantly sui generis. (Fantasy. 10 & up)

Kirkus Reviews