Have Sword, Will Travel

Garth Nix and Sean Williams's Have Sword, Will Travel is a funny quest for 9 year olds about a boy who gets knighted entirely by accident.

What happens

Odo is the seventh child of the village miller. He's big for his age, strong from hauling sacks about, and he'll be thirteen next spring, which is when most people in Lenburh have already settled what they're going to be. He hasn't a clue.

Eleanor knows exactly. Her mother was a soldier who got knighted on a battlefield, and Eleanor intends to be a knight too, just without the dying part. Her father the apothecary mostly lets her get on with it. She's quick, she's three steps ahead, and she is very good with an eel spear.

The river has been drying up all summer, which nobody can explain, because it keeps raining. The two of them go down for eels and find something silver in the mud.

Odo cuts his finger on it. A drop of blood runs down the blade. The sword wakes up.

His name is Hildebrand Shining Foebiter and he would like to be called Biter, thank you. A sword like him can only be woken by the blood of a true knight. Odo is plainly not a knight, so Biter simply fixes that, knights him on the spot, and appoints Eleanor his squire.

Which is the wrong way round for both of them, and they both know it.

The comedy is very physical. Biter wants a quest, so he sets off, and Odo has to dig his heels into the path and lean back with his whole body to stop being towed through the village by his own wrist. There's a lot of that and it stays funny.

Now, about Biter. He is a weapon and he behaves like one. Soon after waking he takes a swing at a boy who was only being cheeky, and Odo has to haul him back to stop it. Biter then offers to behead a man over a debt he has already repaid, and Eleanor makes a joke about it, and Odo shouts at them both to stop. Nobody is hurt in any of this, and the book is clearly on Odo's side. But there is a lot of talk of chopping heads off for a nine year old, so it depends how your reader takes that sort of thing.

What to read next

If they like a pair who shouldn't work together, The Wizards of Once is in the library. A wizard boy who can't do magic goes looking for a witch, and comes back with a warrior girl instead.