Read Sea Quest 2 – Silda the Electric Eel free for 7 days. £7.99/month after - less than a paperback.
Adam Blade's Silda the Electric Eel is the second Sea Quest book, a deep-sea chase for 7 year olds that leads straight to a giant eel you can't lay a finger on.
Max has only had his gills for a day. He's tearing about the seabed on an aquabike with Rivet, his robot dog, and he thinks it's brilliant.
Lia doesn't. She's a Merryn, one of the sea people, and she rides a swordfish called Spike.
She gives Max three rules for the ocean. He's lost track of the third the moment she stops talking (guess which one he needs first).
They're hunting for the pieces of the Skull of Thallos. A scientist called the Professor stole it and broke it up, and without it Lia's people are losing their powers. He's also the man who kidnapped Max's dad.
From there it doesn't let up. A fish snatches the one thing that shows them the way, and the chase runs into an undertow, then a wall of sharp white coral, then three snapperfish that can smell blood from miles off.
After that there's a wrecked submarine and a maze of tunnels, with something very big following them in.
Chapter after chapter stops on a cliffhanger, so expect to hear "just one more" a lot.
The best bit is Max and Lia together. She knows the sea, right down to which flower leaves a bright yellow trail to follow back out. He knows machines, and can rewire a submarine door in a hurry.
They bicker the whole way, and they'd be sunk without each other. Rivet, meanwhile, sums it all up in two words. "Bad fish."
It gets properly scary once they reach the eel's cave.
The floor is littered with skeletons, some of them human. The Professor speaks through the machine strapped to the eel, and he threatens Lia with a spinning saw.
More than once Max is sure he's about to die. He thinks about his mum too, who went missing at sea before the story starts.
If your reader is the sort who lies awake over a scary scene, that's a lot. If they already love a monster battle, they'll probably race through it. (It's the American edition, so it's Mom and not Mum.)
It catches you up in a page or so. For how Max really ended up underwater, go back to the first book, Cephalox the Cyber Squid. It starts in the island city of Aquora, where Max borrows a submarine and finds a silver-haired girl with gills staring in through the glass.
A library hand-picked by an English teacher, delivered through a calm, ad-free app. If your child already loves reading, we keep up.
7-day free trial. Then £7.99/month.