How to Cheat a Dragon’s Curse

Cressida Cowell's How to Cheat a Dragon's Curse is the fourth Hiccup adventure, a funny, freezing race against the clock for 9 year olds set in the coldest Viking winter in a hundred years.

What happens

The sea around Berk has frozen solid. Gobber the Belch drives the class across the ice on a sleigh pulled by huge white Sabre-Tooth dragons, to hunt birds with bows and arrows on skis. Hiccup is secretly on the birds' side (he hasn't hit a single one all morning).

Then Fishlegs, who would normally run a mile from trouble, spots six Hysterics having breakfast. They're the most bloodthirsty Tribe around. Fishlegs charges straight at them on his skis, yelling insults! Hiccup has to draw them off, and he ends up skiing right off the edge of a cliff.

Something is clearly wrong with Fishlegs. He's sneezing, shivering and flying into rages. Old Wrinkly works out why. It's the sting of a Venomous Vorpent from an earlier adventure, and Fishlegs has until ten the next morning. The only cure is a vegetable nobody is supposed to name, from a land most Vikings think is made up. (It's the potato.)

The friendship is the heart of this one. Stoick tells Hiccup to give Fishlegs up because he's too odd to be seen with. Hiccup won't. If your reader has ever been told who they should and shouldn't be friends with, they'll be firmly on his side.

Toothless is on great form too. He's been woken from his winter sleep and he's furious about it. He hates his little fur coat being called a dress. And his pretend toilet emergency at five in the morning will have your reader in fits.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

The whole story hangs on whether a best friend will die, and Old Wrinkly says that sting is nearly always fatal. Snotlout also whips the sleigh dragons just for fun, and there's the story of how a giant sea dragon killed the Hysterics' old chief. A child who worries a lot about people getting ill might find it tense. For one who loves a ticking clock and a loyal friend, it's very gripping.

It looks back at the earlier adventures, so a newcomer is better off going back to How to Train Your Dragon first.

What to read next

If the frozen Viking world is what grabs them, try Neil Gaiman's Odd and the Frost Giants. Odd is a Viking boy on a crutch, and in a winter that won't end he limps off into the snow after a fox.