The Secrets of Droon 2 – Journey to the Volcano Palace

Tony Abbott's Journey to the Volcano Palace is a Droon adventure for 7 year olds about three friends, a secret staircase and a sorcerer who lives inside a volcano.

What happens

Eric, Julie and Neal share a big secret. If you shut the door of the little room under Eric's basement stairs and switch off the light, the floor disappears. A shimmering staircase appears instead, leading down into the magical land of Droon.

It isn't their first visit. The night before this one, all three of them dream about Droon, and Eric wakes up on his bedroom floor wrapped in his sheet like a mummy. Princess Keeah has told them that dreaming about Droon means you're going back. So down the stairs they go.

This time the evil sorcerer Lord Sparr has taken a powerful red jewel called the Eye of Dawn from Keeah, and he's hidden it in his secret palace in a volcano. Keeah, the old wizard Galen and Max the spider troll (eight legs, bright orange hair) need help to get it back.

There's so much packed in. The Lumpies are a tribe of chubby purple creatures who look exactly like cushions, until Neal sits on one. The gate to Sparr's land is invisible, and you can only see it reflected in a desert pool. The children have to throw water at thin air until the iron gate drips into view, which is such a good idea. Then there are rock monsters that breathe fire, a witch with a scaly tail who lives in a pool, and a lake of bubbling lava.

It's a short, fast read with lots of one-line paragraphs and plenty of Whoosh! and Klang! The three friends feel very real. Eric always muddles his left and right (which turns out to matter). Neal makes jokes even when he really shouldn't. Julie bites her lip when she's working something out.

There's a bigger mystery running underneath too. Keeah's mum disappeared two years ago after a battle with Sparr, and this book brings the first real clue about what happened to her.

The scary bits are the fun sort of scary. Sparr is a proper baddie with fins behind his ears and he has a creepy secret, but the children always keep their nerve.

What to read next

If your reader likes magic doors and quests where kids get to be the heroes, this is a great series to get stuck into. To see how the stairs first appeared, go back to The Hidden Stairs and the Magic Carpet, where a boring job clearing out the basement turns into something else entirely.