Borgon the Axeboy 2 – Borgon the Axeboy and the Prince’s Shadow

Kjartan Poskitt's Borgon the Axeboy and the Prince's Shadow is a very silly desert adventure for 8 year olds about a small barbarian who enters a contest mostly to annoy the favourites.

What happens

Borgon is a barbarian, and he takes it seriously. Breakfast is a burnt elephant tongue, chopped with his axe and eaten as noisily as possible. So he's appalled that his mum is fussing about her hair and his dad is hunting for a pair of blue socks he knitted himself.

Then a trumpet sounds across the desert. It's the Shadow Trials. That's the contest to choose a bodyguard for the prince. The Raggahoos always win, and they're barely savages at all according to Borgon's mum. They use soap!

Borgon only goes along to watch (with Grizzy the know-it-all neighbour tagging along whether he likes it or not). But the flashiest Raggahoo, Akabbah in his zebra-skin trousers, calls him scared, and you really don't say that to a barbarian.

So Borgon ends up racing through the Mountains of Chaos, dodging a thousand darts and wobbling along a tightrope over a pit with a sabre-toothed bear in it. The Raggahoos cheat at every single stage. On the way Borgon picks up an unexpected sidekick, a baby sand duck who hatches in a picnic bag and only ever says "Quammy!"

It's properly laugh-out-loud. The crowd shout for DEATH, get told no, try HURT A LOT, get told no again, and finally settle for SLIGHTLY SORE. Borgon's friends are great too. Mungoid is so solid that a galloping horse bounces off him. Hunjah mostly worries about his hat.

There are sound effects in capitals everywhere and the jokes come thick and fast. It would be great fun to read aloud.

The humour is a bit gruesome in places, just so you know. There's a skeleton in a tunnel (a lady who went for a picnic and never came back), and Borgon hides by dressing up in her frock and sunhat. The bear pit is full of old bones, and plenty of axe-waving goes on. It's all cartoon stuff, but a very squeamish reader might pull a face.

This is the second Borgon book, but it's easy to jump in here. Everyone gets introduced as they turn up.

What to read next

If your reader loves a hero who's rude, brave and secretly very kind to ducks, they'll probably want his first book too. In the Dangerous Breakfast he sets off across the desert to catch the scariest meal he can find.