Beast Quest 7 – Zepha the Monster Squid

Adam Blade's Zepha the Monster Squid is a Beast Quest adventure for 7 year olds that begins the day after the last one finished.

What happens

Tom is standing at a party in King Hugo's palace. Six Beasts have been freed from the Dark Wizard Malvel's spell, the whole kingdom is dancing, and Tom can't enjoy a minute of it.

Malvel fell into a volcano. Tom saw it happen. But he also heard what Malvel shouted on the way down, and he hasn't been able to shake it since.

Down in the palace cellars there's a suit of golden armour that the king's master of arms has polished every single day for twenty years, waiting for its rightful owner to come back for it.

By the time Tom gets down there, the armour has gone and the old man is on the floor.

Which is where the new quest starts.

What your reader gets from these books is pace. Something goes wrong in the first few minutes, the wizard Aduro explains what has to be done about it, and Tom and Elenna are out of the door with a stallion and a wolf. No sagging middle, no long descriptions to wade through.

It's a proper partnership, too. Elenna has been on every step of the last quest and she's the one dragging Tom onto the dance floor and telling him to stop worrying.

Now the opening, because you should know about it first. The prologue is genuinely frightening. Bats pour out of cracks in the walls in a swarm, claw at an old man's face and hands, tangle in his hair, cover him completely and press the air out of his lungs until everything goes black. He's alive when Tom finds him. But if your reader doesn't like bats, or swarms, or the idea of not being able to breathe, that's a lot, and it's the very first thing in the book.

After that it settles into what these books do. A big creature, clear danger, Tom and Elenna working out how to get past it.

What to read next

You don't need the earlier ones, because this opens a fresh quest with a new goal and explains itself as it goes. But if your reader would rather have it in order, that's where Tom's very first Quest begins, with burnt crops, a dried-up river and a boy who has always wanted a real quest.