Grimm: The Killing Time by Tim Waggoner (Grimm Novel Series #3)

The Killing Time is the third book in the Grimm novelized series based on the popular TV show with the same name.

I haven’t read the first two books and I picked this one up when Grimm ended for the season, to have something to keep me going until the new season returned. I love Grimm, I love Nick Burkhardt and his human and wesen friends, and I was hoping that the book would keep me entertained enough to forget that Grim was not on. And I have to say, for the most part it did.

The story apparently takes place somewhere in season 3, between the 3rd and 4th episode.

Here we meet a nasty wesen, a Wechselbalg, who has the ability of shapeshifting, which enables him to take the appearance of a person whose essence he just stole. Usually the victim would die in the process, however when the Wechselbad attacked Nick, a grimm, well let’s just say that Nick survived.

So now we have two Nicks walking the streets of Portland, none of them knowing that the other exists, at least for a while.

The ‘twin Nick’ is nothing more than a pale copy of the real thing, who incidentally suffers from dementia, which made for some interesting and sometimes dangerous (with a few funny) scenes, which I can easily see translated to the big screen at some point.

Of course Nick’s main friends, Juliette, Hank, captain Renard, Monroe, and Rosalee were all present, all too eager to help, which they did, all using their own strengths (some human, other wesen).

Having read the book, I have to say it did a decent job of setting the story in the world of Grimm. I could easily see Nick and his friends fight the evil wesen, each of them acting just the way we know them from TV.

I could also imagine a Nick double on the streets doing what he thought was cleaning them of wesen, while the real Nick would try to figure out just what was he really dealing with, why some of his wesen friends started to be really afraid of him.

The author got the main characters quite right. He gave us some glimpses into their minds and presented us with some additional background about each main protagonist, which I enjoyed.

Now, having said that, all that extra background did end up being a big annoying as well. Let me explain. The book is based on the TV series, and its main readers will be folks who are actually watching the TV series. I honestly don’t think that anyone who hasn’t watched Grimm would even know about the book, let alone pick it up to read.

So us, Grimm fans, didn’t really need an introduction of every single character playing in the Grimm world. We already knew about each of them, we were already familiar with each of them and we already loved each of them. Even the bad ones.

I guess the author was trying to cater to readers who didn’t know about Grimm and would be confused without that said background. However a non-Grimm fan would simply not know about this book, period.

Having this nit-picking out of the way, I did enjoy this story and knowing that the first two books in the series are not necessary to read this, as each of them can be read as a stand-alone, made it even more enjoyable for me.

For a TV show novelization, it was not bad, not bad at all. Every Grimm fan should pick up this book, I would say if you watch Grimm, reading this novel is a must.