Beast Quest 8 – Claw the Giant Monkey

Adam Blade's Claw The Giant Monkey is a Beast Quest adventure for 7 year olds in which Tom and Elenna head into a steaming jungle to face a huge ape with a claw on the end of its tail.

What happens

An evil wizard called Malvel has stolen a set of magic armour made of gold and hidden its pieces all over the kingdom of Avantia. He's kidnapped the good wizard Aduro too. Tom has sworn to win back every piece, and each one is guarded by a Beast.

This time it's the chain mail, and Tom's magic map shows a tiny gold dot moving about deep in the Dark Jungle.

Getting there is a battle in itself. A rickety bridge collapses and Tom and his horse, Storm, fall into a raging river. Then comes the jungle, with flowers that grab you, swamps full of leeches and a snake that coils round Tom's knee.

And then there's Claw. He's enormous, he smells of old meat and he lives high in the treetops where Tom can't reach him. When he snatches Elenna and carries her off, things look very bad indeed.

What makes this one stand out is Elenna. Trapped at the bottom of an old volcano, she shoots her arrows into the wall and uses them as a ladder to climb out. She's also the one who works out Claw's weak spot. (She even calls herself the brains of the team, and Tom doesn't argue!)

Silver the wolf gets a hero moment too, catching Tom by the trousers just as he's about to slip over the edge.

The chapters are short and nearly every one ends on a cliffhanger, so it's easy to say "just one more". If your reader wants their adventure fast, loud and full of monsters, it's hard to beat.

It opens with a scary scene, though. A market trader and his boy go looking for a rare fruit, and the Beast takes them. It's all screams and no detail, but it's a spooky start for a young reader who's easily frightened.

The book picks up in the middle of a bigger quest, with plenty of mentions of Beasts Tom has faced before. It still makes sense on its own.

What to read next

Want to go back to where Tom's adventures began? Ferno The Fire Dragon opens with a mountain that turns out not to be a mountain at all.