Beast Quest: Querzol the Swamp Monster: Series 23 Book 1

Great read for my son big beast quest fan

Absolutely riveting read

This is the first book of series 23 Beast Quest. Tom is well settled in the land of Aventia and is renown as the Master of the Beasts. The story opens with a birthday celebration for Queen Aroha, where Tom and his friend Elenna are enjoying the feast, but the celebrations come to a halt when a group of mounted riders approach the castle, bringing with them a long lost hero...Something is terribly wrong and Tom finds himself in terrible danger, having to escape to the wildlands with Elenna, where he faces his first terrible foe Querzol the tree beast.Stripped of his power, can Tom find the courage to fight and will he discover the truth behind the "hero's" return to Avantia?This is a gripping first part in a 4 part story, which is a real page turner. The book is suitable for readers aged around 8/9 plus who are confident readers. The book has pictures dotted throughout to compliment the story and the text is larger print, so chapters are shorter and snappier to keep you reading along.You definitely want to read on at the end of the story, so I recommend buying all four books in the series to complete the story.The book also features an extract from the new series Beast Quest: New Blood, to give a taster of the new series of books.

My ten-year-old son has a MASSIVE collection of Beast Quest books and always eagerly awaits each series, but for the first time I think he's coming to accept how repetitive the format is and that they're no longer challenging him as a reader. This doesn't necessarily reflect on the quality of the book itself, but Querzol the Swamp Monster came under an unusual level of criticism in our house for a Beast Quest book.The main point of contention for my son was that the main beast was defeated far too easily in his opinion, which felt like the characters were just going through the motions. I think this is probably a pretty harsh assessment to make of the twenty-third series of repetitive, formulaic books, but that was his response all the same.That said, he still wants to read the rest in the series, and was VERY interested in the preview at the back for a new type of Beast Quest series. So there's still hope for us, but the series will need to grow and mature with the readers if they want us to keep following.

There must be a factory somewhere with writes churning out Beast Quest books one after the other! And we seem to have most of them in our house. Our now 10-year-old used to be crazy about them but it seems that the novelty has worn off recently. They are very samey and I think he's just realised that they all follow the same formula with a few key tweaks. So he wasn't very excited about the arrival of this new book but still managed to read it in a couple of evenings. He didn't give it a glowing review but did seem to enjoy it. It would just be good if they threw in a few more surprises. As a parent, I think anything that gets reluctant readers engaged in reading deserves five stars, and the Beast Quest series definitely does that.