Beast Quest 10 – Vipero the Snake Man

Vipero The Snake Man by Adam Blade is a Beast Quest adventure for 7 year olds, and this one takes Tom into the desert.

What happens

If your reader is new to these, the setup is simple. A wizard called Malvel has broken up a suit of magic armour and hidden the pieces around the kingdom of Avantia. Each piece has a monster sitting on it. Tom has to go and get them all back.

He has three already. The helmet sharpens his eyesight. The chain mail steadies his nerve. The breastplate makes him strong.

This time the enchanted map points south, to two pieces of golden leg armour lying on a sand dune. Something is guarding them.

Tom travels with his friend Elenna, a black stallion called Storm and a wolf called Silver. The first problem isn't the Beast at all. It's that the desert heat would finish off the horse and the wolf, so the two of them have to find somebody willing to mind the animals.

The town they ride into has every door shut and every shutter closed. The market square is empty and the water trough is bone dry. Then a woman opens a door and tells them to get inside before the sun kills them.

These books move fast. The chapters are short and something happens in each one. There's a satisfying bit of kit-collecting too, because every piece of armour does a different job and your reader will be keeping track.

That makes it a good one for a child who has just got the hang of chapter books and wants to race through a whole pile of them. The next one is always the same shape, which is exactly the appeal.

One thing to be ready for. The book opens with a man dying. A nomad is crossing the desert alone to win honour for his tribe. He runs out of water, finds a cave and Vipero is inside it. Two heads, four eyes and two sets of fangs in his neck. That's the prologue, before Tom appears at all.

A child who likes monsters will think this is great. One who takes scary things to bed with them might do better with something gentler.

What to read next

If the desert one goes down well, Arachnid the King of Spiders picks up straight afterwards. Tom has the leg armour, he's still thinking about the snake, and there's a cave full of crystals with something very large waiting in it.