Published By: Bloomsbury
Pages: 304
Released On: 27/07/2026
It’s the Midsummer Feast on the Islet of Glimt and on this magical moonlit evening, the word on everyone’s lips is bandits. Reports of masked men burning villages are spreading throughout the Archipelago, but worse is still to come: Christopher and Anya are ambushed and one of the people they love most is kidnapped.
The two children – alongside Ratwin the ratatoska and Jacques the Jaculus dragon – set sail on the Neverfear to recover three precious treasures. Together they must face fearsome giants, win a daring race, and outwit deadly enemies to save those they love most.
*****
Thanks to NetGalley and Bloomsbury for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review
MAPS!
I’m going to start a petition that means if an author writes a series and there’s significant time between releases, there should be a page just reminding the reader of what happened in the previous book because I’d all but forgotten everything that had happened in the series so far.
Having said that, I immediately felt taken in by this book, the characters, the magical animals, that it didn’t necessarily matter whether I remembered everything that had come before.
I didn’t particularly enjoy the first book. It’s was okay but it didn’t feel like anything new. But the second book I really liked.
Once again, the little dragon Jacques is my favourite character. He’s so witty and funny and rude and outspoken and I just love him.
This series has got better and better and I can see this being a future children’s classic.
I could see this as a TV series or film series. It’s got a similar filmic quality that Narnia has.
There’s magic and dragons and sphinxes and chimeras and centaurs and all manner of wonderful magical creatures that are wonderful.
It’s got quite a lot of chapters and they’re all relatively short which I like. It helps add to the fast paced nature of the story and helps it go by really quickly.
I read that Katherine plans this to be a series of five books so we’ve got at least two more which is exciting. Like I said, I didn’t overly like the first one but I enjoyed the second. And then this one. So by the time we get to the fifth book it should be really thrilling.
It’s not an overly long book but nor is it really short, but it is enjoyable and so easy to lose yourself in that it zooms by and I read it in one night.
I really enjoyed the link between Christopher and the animals. It’s a subplot that has gone through the series but it’s explored more in this one which was relaly good.
It had a different tone to it than the others but I can’t quite put my finger on it. It felt a bit flat. The plot is a bit like join the dots. A bit like “he went there then she went there and he did this”. And because it’s the third book, she doesn’t need to do the character development any more and I missed that. It’s the characters who make this series and I found them lacking somewhat here. Still very enjoyable and I’d highly recommend it but it was lacking a certain something.
Books By Your Bedside 