Hilda: The Night of the Trolls
Luke Pearson
Flying Eye Books

This large format book contains Hilda and the Stone Forest and Hilda and the Mountain King, the fifth and sixth of the amazing graphic novel series.

In case you’ve not met Hilda before, she’s a blue-haired girl who lives with her mum and Twig, her fox-with-antlers pet, in a remote mountain cottage and then, later, in the city of Trolberg. Hilda finds adventure irresistible and in Hilda and the Stone Forest we first find her involved in the usual Hilda style adventure as she and Twig are chasing a small patch of ground that has weirdly grown legs and run off carrying atop itself a very small house full of very small people whom Hilda is desperately trying to rescue. Suddenly however, she realises that she’s late for Sunday dinner with her Mum and home she dashes taking the tiny house with her. During dinner, she succeeds in keeping what she’s been doing from Mum and meanwhile the residents of the tiny house sample the fare.

Dinner over, the girl tells her mum she’s going out again and off she goes, supposedly to the park; but this is Hilda and that isn’t exactly what happens. Eventually, after insisting the two of them go out together, which proves pretty eventful, Hilda’s mum grounds her. The girl then employs teleportation skills to escape the confines of her room but Mum grabs hold of her, things go haywire and mother and daughter end up lost in a stone forest wherein live the trolls.

Happily the two of them manage to survive what proves to be a weird and sometimes perilous adventure, one that isn’t over, but is continued in Hilda and the Mountain King.

Hilda, still in the Stone Forest has now morphed into a troll child whereas her Mum is back home caring for a troll baby. While in the wilds with the trolls, it becomes evident to Hilda that increasing numbers of trolls are being called to Trolberg’s outskirts and that could well mean trouble is on its way.

The troll mother that is looking after Hilda offers to re-humanise her but Hilda must find and bring in return, ‘something very special from the horde of the Mountain King’.

Can Hilda pull this off?

Without spoiling the ending, I’ll just say, the finale is a terrific culmination and revelation that ties everything together; but it’s a real shame that this is the end of Luke Pearson’s wonderful and wondrous graphic novel series. Long live Hilda and her indomitable spirit of adventure.