Beast Quest

The kingdom of Avantia keeps six Beasts, sworn since the first age to guard its mountains and seas, forests and skies. But a dark wizard has twisted their oath, and now the very guardians of the realm are laying it to waste. Only a farm boy named Tom will answer the call to arms. This is Beast Quest: a brisk heroic-fantasy adventure for younger readers, published under the house name "Adam Blade," in which each short book is a single duel between one boy and one monster. Behind the Blade name works a rotating stable of authors — Michael Ford, Allan Frewin Jones, Cherith Baldry, Conrad Mason and others — and the quest runs to hundreds of slim volumes, gathered into cycles of six. It opens with the Golden Armour cycle and marches on through The Amulet of Aventia, The Dark Realm, The Shade of Death, The World of Chaos, The Lost World, The Pirate King, Master of the Beasts, The Warlock's Staff and beyond, with special bumper editions and a prequel arc, Where It All Began, filling in the map. As Tom masters each land, the world widens past Avantia to neighbouring kingdoms, fresh Beasts, and new tyrants. The pleasure is the clockwork of it: the stallion Storm, the wolf Silver, and the archer Elenna at Tom's side, a Beast to free and a token to win, chapter by breathless chapter. It is built for the newly independent reader — large print, fast chases, a creature roaring on every cover — and it rewards the collector who likes to complete a set. Begin at the beginning, with Ferno the Fire Dragon, first of the six-book Golden Armour cycle; read those six in turn, then follow the cycles as they came. The numbers on the spines are the path.