Cypher The Mountain Giant by Adam BladeMy rating: ★★☆☆☆
By Cyper the Mountain Giant, the Beast Quest series has developed a strict formula (though the first book varied slightly).
Step One: During the prologue, a handful of brand-new characters are attacked by a Beast and narrowly survive.
Step Two: Elenna and Tom reach the approximate area of the next Beast. Conveniently, they run into the survivors, who explain the hardships of the area and their encounter with the Beast.
Step Three: Elenna and Tom start to turn around the lives of the unlucky locals, usually including the prologue's survivors; they'll likely have to deal with a quick crisis or two before they can set out to complete their main task. Why Elenna and Tom are the most competent two individuals in all of Avantia in spite of their pre-pubescent age, I couldn't tell you.
Step Four: Elenna and Tom go to fight the Beast. Tom tends to do all of the work; Elenna either helps or is busy playing damsel in distress (and I really hope to see her get out of that rut in one of the upcoming books).
Step Five: The Beast, now freed, gives Tom's shield a blessing of some kind, and the wizard Aduro shows up for pointless congratulations. The end.
All in all, if you're looking for a series of short, formulaic fantasy novels to help ease a young child into the genre, the Beast Quest series isn't a bad place to start. I can't say I highly recommend it, but it should at least be entertaining to the target audience (RL3, around ages 5-8).
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