Fury of the Dragon Goddess

Sarwat Chadda's Fury of the Dragon Goddess is a mythology adventure for 10 year olds about a deli kid from Manhattan on holiday in London with a demon.

What happens

Sik is fourteen and he's spending the summer in London. His old family friend Daoud is now a famous model, so they're staying at the Ritz (with a balcony, which Sik is VERY pleased about).

He hasn't come alone, though. Rabisu is an ancient Mesopotamian demon with horns under her turban and a tail under her kaftan. Sik is teaching her the rules. Dogs with names are off the menu, for a start.

It picks up after an earlier adventure in New York, and Sik fills you in as he goes. He's immortal now, which he mentions almost in passing!

Then his best friend Belet turns up. She's the daughter of the goddess Ishtar, she carries a sword that talks back, and within a minute she and Rabisu have smashed up the suite.

Belet is after a cracked clay tablet her mother chased for centuries. It was looted from a museum in Baghdad and it's about to be auctioned at a castle in the countryside, to a room full of the worst people in the world. It's a tablet that can change destinies, and Sik knows exactly what he'd wish for (his big brother Mo back).

Reading it is a lot like hanging out with Sik. He's cheeky, he talks straight to you, and he'd honestly rather be back at the deli than creeping round a castle in a tuxedo. Who else would stop in the middle of a heist to check his hair?

Worth knowing before you hand it over

There's darker stuff under the jokes. The auction guests include a man wanted for genocide, Belet cheerfully remembers cutting off a demon's head, and the hostess makes a racist remark about Arabs. Mo died in a motorbike accident three years ago. That's backstory, not something that happens in the book, but Sik misses him every day.

For a sensitive reader that might be a lot. If your reader already loves myths and monsters with plenty of laughs, this is a great fit, and there's lots of Iraqi history woven in too.

What to read next

If Sik's voice is what they love, try The Lightning Thief next. Percy Jackson is another wisecracking narrator who finds out the old myths are alive and well in modern New York.