Dragon Storm – Skye and Soulsinger

Alastair Chisholm's Skye and Soulsinger is a Dragon Storm adventure for 8 year olds about a princess who comes home to find her charming big brother has a dragon of his own.

What happens

Princess Skye has been packed off for the summer (her father never quite knows what to do with her). When her carriage rolls back into Rivven, the palace guards wear new black uniforms, the king seems half asleep, and her brother Harald has taken to wearing long gloves.

Underneath, his hands are bright red.

Then something growls in the shadows of the Assembly Hall. It's Firedreamer, a massive red dragon with furious golden eyes, and Harald can make it obey him just by clenching his fist. He says enemy dragons attacked the king. Now he's gathering an army to march on the kingdom next door.

Everyone thinks Harald is wonderful. Skye isn't so sure. His jokes have started to turn a bit cruel.

So she does something about it. She climbs into his room through a loose floorboard, borrows a magic jewel called the Dragon's Eye and slips out of the palace dressed as a sooty boot boy. Behind a wardrobe in a crumbling cottage she finds a secret guild of dragonseers, and a very surprising idea about who that red dragon really belongs to.

Skye is a fab heroine. She's brave and prickly and she's had enough of being told a princess is only there to wave at crowds. Her maid Moira is her partner in crime, and it's lovely to read a friendship where the maid gets some of the best lines.

It's a slightly more serious story than it looks. Harald gives rousing speeches blaming foreigners, the cheerful palace chef is arrested just for where he comes from, and the crowds cheer along. Could that lead to some good chats about who to believe? Probably!

There's a mystery running underneath it all, too. Skye dreams of a pale blue dragon with soft owl ears crying for help. When she tries to reach Firedreamer, she sees red and then pale blue, and hears the same cry.

What to read next

Skye has met the dragonseers before this book begins, so if your reader is new to the series it's worth going back to the start. Tomas and Ironskin opens in a blacksmith's forge in Rivven, at a time when nobody believes there's been a dragon there for a thousand years.