The Secrets of Droon 6 – The Sleeping Giant of Goll

Tony Abbott's The Sleeping Giant of Goll is a fantasy adventure for 7 year olds about a wicked sorcerer, a buried bronze giant and a dream that doesn't make sense until the very end.

What happens

Eric, Julie and Neal only go back to Droon when they dream about it. For two whole weeks nobody has. Then Julie dreams of floating over a hilltop covered in gold crowns, and one of them is hers.

Down the rainbow stairs they go, straight into a ring of trees that grabs them and swings them about until the sun comes up. Then something rises out of the lake (Neal is sure it's a serpent). It's actually the wizard Galen's brand-new submarine, with Princess Keeah and Max the spider troll inside.

Lord Sparr has tracked down the tomb of Zor, a giant made of bronze who, legend says, was taller than a mountain. Sparr is going to wake him up. So the friends set off across the dusty hills of Panjibarrh to stop him.

Along the way there's a dust storm that whisks Julie off, a village of furry mole people with a fox-eared king called Batamogi, and a mysterious blue dragon that keeps turning up.

It's a middle-of-the-series book. It follows on from an adventure where Sparr stole the amulet that can wake the giant, and Keeah's mother is still under a spell that keeps changing her shape. It explains enough to follow, though.

The chapters are short, the sound effects are loud (Thoom!) and Neal has a joke for every disaster. Expect to do a lot of voices.

And the dream really does matter. Julie works out what her nine crowns mean right at the end, and it's a very satisfying click.

It finishes with the three friends deciding the stairs only work when they go together, because nobody is more special than anybody else. Isn't that a lovely thing for a series to say?

There's giant-sized peril, with Zor stomping about and Sparr ordering him to destroy the children, but it's exciting rather than scary.

What to read next

For an early adventure where the dreaming works just the same way, try Journey to the Volcano Palace, which opens with Eric falling out of bed in the middle of a nightmare about Sparr.