The Beasts of Grimheart (Longburrow)

The Beasts of Grimheart/is the third book in the Longburrow series. I haven’t read the first two, but this story was so exciting to read that I want to read the other books now. It’s a little bit like The Lord of the Rings with rabbits instead of hobbits, dwarves, humans, and elves. The Ancients made a powerful monster called Gormalech that brings them riches from deep underground, but it becomes so strong that it begins to devour them. The Goddess imprisons the Gormalech underground, but it tries to find a way out of its prison. It creates the Gorm, enemies of the rabbits. In order to defeat the Gorm, and try to destroy the Gormalech once and for all, the rabbit clans have to work together and share their inherited Gifts of the Goddess.

It’s a little confusing to try to keep all the characters straight. There is an index with a character list that is six pages long! A lot of the rabbits are relatives. Podkin and Paz are brother and sister who don’t always get along. Podkin realizes that his jealousy of his sister is just like his uncle’s jealousy of his sister, Enna, who is Paz and Podkin’s mother. I’ve got a little brother, too, and we don’t always get along. The lesson is that we all have to help each other when something important is at stake, so that’s one of the morals in this book. The way this book ends makes me think there will be another book in the series – I hope so!