Read Beast Quest 1 – Ferno the Fire Dragon free for 7 days. £7.99/month after - less than a paperback.
Adam Blade's Ferno the Fire Dragon is a fast, fiery adventure for 7 year olds about a blacksmith's boy who finally gets the quest he's wished for all his life.
Tom practises sword fighting on a sack of hay, using a poker. His dad left on a mysterious quest when Tom was a baby and never came back. What Tom wants most is a real adventure, and to find out why his father went.
Then strange things start happening around his village. A wheat field burns to black stubble in minutes. The river runs low. So Tom sets off for the king's palace to ask for help.
Getting in is the tricky bit! There's an enormous queue and a clerk who can't hear a word anyone says. So Tom sneaks in with a pretend kitchen delivery and ends up carrying a platter into the king's own dinner.
That's where he learns the truth. The Beasts from the old bedtime stories are real. An evil wizard has put them under a spell, and a fire dragon is the one burning the crops.
The king gives Tom a key to unlock the dragon's enchanted collar. The wizard Aduro gives him a map that comes alive under his fingers, a sword and a very plain wooden shield. There's a black horse called Storm, and on the road he meets Elenna, a girl with a bow, and her wolf, Silver.
The pace is what makes it. Short chapters, cliffhanger endings and a hero who says 'I will' without a second's thought. Elenna is every bit as brave as Tom, which is lovely to see.
The opening pages are fierce, though. A knight climbs a mountain that turns out to be the dragon, and all his squire finds afterwards is the knight's empty armour, scorched and smoking. A farmer's horses have already been taken, and only their roasted bones are left. A child who frightens easily might want to read those first pages with you. A dragon fan will probably be hooked straight away.
If your reader loves Tom's courage and fancies trying the same author under the sea, Cephalox the Cyber Squid has a boy, a robot dog and a submarine he really shouldn't have borrowed.
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