Sea Quest 1 – Cephalox the Cyber Squid

Adam Blade's Cephalox the Cyber Squid is an underwater adventure for 7 year olds about a boy whose dad is snatched by a giant robot squid.

What happens

Max is twelve and lives in Aquora, a huge floating city in the middle of the sea. His dad is the city's top defence engineer. His best friend is Rivet, a robot dog Max built and programmed himself (Rivet can say a few words, and they're mostly "Yes, Max!").

One morning Rivet spots something in the water. Max borrows a submarine he definitely isn't allowed to touch and follows him down. There he sees a girl with silver hair, gills and webbed hands. A Merryn! Everyone in Aquora thinks they're just a legend.

Then the alarms go off. Enormous black tentacles burst out of the sea and one of them grabs Max's dad. The tentacles are fitted with claws, spikes and blasters. This squid is half animal, half machine, and someone is controlling it.

What follows is non-stop. A crash on the seabed, a cockpit filling with water, and a rescue that leaves Max able to breathe underwater. Then a hidden city at the bottom of the ocean, a prison cell and a battle in the middle of a square.

It's written for readers who want action on every page, and it delivers. The early chapters are short and punchy. Max is clever with gadgets as well as brave, which makes a nice change. He fixes Rivet's wiring with a penknife to get them out of trouble! And Lia, the Merryn princess, is nobody's sidekick. She keeps telling Max off, which is very funny.

A couple of darker moments are worth a mention for this shelf. Max's mum went missing on a submarine trip when he was two (that's all backstory). And during the attack on the city, one of the officers is zapped by a heat beam. It's over in a sentence, but a sensitive reader might notice it.

If your reader likes robots, sea monsters and a hero with a dog by his side, this is a great place to start. By the end there's a whole quest ahead of Max.

What to read next

If they love Max and Rivet, Adam Blade's other big series begins with Ferno the Fire Dragon, where a village boy called Tom finds a wheat field burned black and a dragon on the loose.