★★★★★ 5
Gravity Falls Fans, Your Time Has Come With This Excellent Book
Format: Hardcover
'Gravity Falls' was one of the best animated series to be created on the Disney Channel, where the majority of shows are trash IMO. The humor, voice acting, writing, animation and mythology were all perfect. Very much like a kids version of The X-Files, but not dumbed down and still very adult in many ways. Dipper's Journal 3 was something I've always desired to see become an actual bookshelf tome and now fans, like myself, have it in this extremely awesome book. All the pages shown throughout the series are there, as well as those that were never seen or hinted at, and a large section supposedly added by Dipper and Mabel. One of the best features that caught me by surprise were the front and rear covers. Normally, a book with a dust jacket like this has a neutral plain one color cover to it under the removable jacket. Not this baby! It looks just like the jacket, just without the logos. Really, you don't even need the jacket, but it does protect the beauty of the real covers. Even better, the publisher went a step further by adding a treat to fans on the inside of the dust jacket. Blueprint forms of the Memory Gun, Gideonbot, The Portal, Laptop and Sea Monster submersible. I never expected that since 98% of them are just white on the inside. Another wonderful addition is the sewn in cloth bookmark. You know a hardcover is well made when they have one of these. Shows the publisher spent time to make it worth having and enjoying. I'm not going to talk about the interior pages, since they are all fantastic. Just get the book and have a great time with it. Now, there are two things missing that should have been included, and technically would have dropped my rating to four stars, but the book is still five nonetheless. It is missing a cryptogram decoder page and a foldout poster of the full Bill Cipher cryptogram map Dipper and Mabel had to put together using all three journals. There is a decoder on-line, but having it in the book should have been a no-brainer addition since every page has codes to decipher. Writing wise, the only minor thing that bugs me is with the misuse of commas, or the lack of, where they should be at times. For example, when describing three things - blue, red and green - Rob Renzetti has a tendency to do like a LOT of people have started up over the last decade or so in putting a comma after the second word 'red' when it doesn't belong there. Yes, I'm being a grammar nitpick, but it really gets annoying after awhile. These elements are minor and the amount of excellent artwork and information contained within the book make up for missing items and writing issues. It's a shame the 'Special Limited Edition' version with blacklight ink pages, removable images/notes and a magnifying glass is so extremely expensive. Instead of two books, there should have been just one with all of the goodies. This is a must have for all Gravity Falls fans. Don't miss it.
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Reviewed in the United States on April 16, 2018
