Beast Quest 15 – Narga the Sea Monster

Adam Blade's Narga the Sea Monster is a Beast Quest adventure for 7 year olds with a six-headed monster, a bounty hunter and a very dark ocean.

What happens

Tom and Elenna are in Gorgonia, the Dark Wizard Malvel's own kingdom, where the sky is red and nothing is quite what it seems. Sepron the Sea Serpent, a friendly Beast from back home, is a prisoner somewhere out on the Black Ocean. Tom can feel Sepron's tooth trembling in his shield.

Getting to the sea is a story all on its own. Malvel's map promises easy green fields and delivers a steep rocky climb instead (never trust a map from a villain!). Then Storm gallops straight into quicksand. Elenna's clever fix, two ropes fired across on arrows, is one of the best moments in the book.

Then things get worse. A bounty hunter called Jent grabs Elenna, because Malvel has put up posters all over Gorgonia with their faces on. WANTED ALIVE. Tom has to fight his way past about fifteen of Jent's men before he can even go after her.

And Narga himself? He's six snake heads on one big lumpy body, and he can walk on top of the waves.

These books are all about action, and this one never lets up. Tom uses every bit of magic he's collected (huge jumps, super strength, a feather that heals cuts), but the moments you remember are the plans he and Elenna come up with together.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

There are some darker moments for this shelf. In the opening pages Narga snatches a young smuggler off his ship by the head, and later his sister says the monster killed him. Jent holds a knife to Elenna's throat and kicks Silver the wolf unconscious. Elenna ends up in the stocks with a crowd throwing stones at her.

A sensitive reader might want a grown-up close by for those chapters. If your reader is already hooked on Tom's quests and loves a proper monster, though, they'll race through it.

What to read next

It comes partway through Tom's adventure in Gorgonia, so it helps to have met these two before. To see how they first got into Malvel's kingdom, try Torgor the Minotaur, where they step through the Lion's Gate and meet a one-eyed gatekeeper called Kerlo.