Skylanders Universe: Spyro Versus the Mega Monsters

The Mask of Power #1

by Onk Beakman (Fictional Author), Cavan Scott, Tino Santanach (Illustrator)

Spyro versus the Mega Monsters is the first in an ongoing Mask of Power series of original novels set in the Skylanders universe. These all new stories feature favorite characters from Spyro’s Adventure, Giants and beyond.

Genres: Childrens, Fantasy, Fiction, Dragons

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Onk Beakman knew he wanted to be a world-famous author from the moment he was hatched. In fact, the book-loving penguin was so keen that he wrote his first novel, while still inside his egg (to this day, nobody is entirely sure where he got the tiny pencil and notebook from). Growing up on the icy wastes of Skylands' Frozen Desert was difficult for a penquin who hated the cold. While his brothers plunged into the freezing waters, Onk could be found with his beak in a book and a pen clutched in his flippers.

Yet his life changed forever when a giant floating head appeared in the skies above the tundra. It was Kaos, attempting to melt the icecaps so he could get his grubby little hands on an ancient weapon buried beneath the snow. Onk watched open-beaked as Spyro swept in and sent the evil Portal Master packing. From that day on, Onk knew that he must chronicle the Skylanders' greatest adventures. He traveled the length and breadth of Skylands, collecting every tale he could find about Master Eon's brave champions.

Today, Onk writes from a shack on the beautiful sands of Bistering Beach, where he lives with his two pet sea cucumbers.

Reviews

[Hannah May · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read it a chapter a night to my two preschoolers. No amazing plot twists. No cliff hangers between chapters. Solid writing style. Some pictures. They both begged for another chapter every time.
All in all the kids loved it and that's what matters.

[Rosver · Rating 3 out of 5]

A pretty decent book for its kind. Most of these kind of books are pretty lazy but this shows solid effort.

The story is simple, hold no surprises, the adventure aspect isn't particularly strong. Still it is solid and well told to create a satisfying enough experience. Considering the target audience, the story is adequate for its purpose.

The characters are somewhat weak in here. Spyro, the main character, is honestly uninteresting. His personality is bland and fits the generic hero character troupe. The side characters are really simplistic and flat. Kaos, the villain, might be the most interesting of the bunch. He is strangely more fleshed out than any other characters and a more strong contributor to the story than any character. Overall the characters are simplistic, which might not be entirely bad considering the audience; contributing is how the characters are solidly drawn and doesn't do anything to make you dislike them.

Overall, an adequate reading. It doesn't have anything outstanding to offer but still provides a solid enough entertainment.

[Emma Radford · Rating 5 out of 5]

We love Spyro!

[Linz aka Mlbp · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's super good. My favourite bit was the chapter called chapter three the 'Chompy Attack'.

[Jacob · Rating 5 out of 5]

In my opinion, this book was kind of weird. What I liked about this book was the skylanders.
What I didn't like about this book was that Kaos was not the real Kaos. In conclusion, I would recommend this book.

[Payton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Its where Kaos starts acting good but it all leads up to an evil plan.

[Jordy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Zac gives it 9.7 stars.

[BunnyWolf · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was very enjoyable and my brother loved it to

[Ha'Ani Whitlock · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sometimes, I just need to sit down, forget about the world, and read an old kids' book. A kids book, because if it's a well-written one, it will cheer me up or at least make me smile. An old one, because new kids books are cringey and often have the most unfunny jokes in existence.

And by kids book, I don't mean a picture book necessarily, I mean a middle grade kind of thing, like Land of Stories or Harry Potter. Something light and cheerful and fun.

This book is from 2013, and wow—the humor is soooo 2013. Strange to think that it was only 11 years ago, but the humor is so... Different. Relying on alliterations and tongue-twisters, metaphors and puns, and reversal of expectations really makes the style of humor stand out against modern kids books like, I dunno, Catwad (Okay, to be fair, I don't know a lot of 'modern' middle grade books, so don't take me too seriously here; my sister reads Catwad), where the funniest bits are butt jokes, "trick bad words" ("what the fuuuuuungi?" [example, not a direct quote by the way]), and... Stuff.

Okay, point is, the humor is very different. Ah, and refreshing and nostalgic. I miss the cheesy alliterations of 2013 ("one of the Chompies sunk its long teeth into the Mabu’s plump posterior. ") Alliterations aren't necessarily funny, but they add charm and a cheerful, lighthearted tone. Just what I needed today.

And reversal of expectations is one of the oldest methods for humour, but I like it. For example, near the end of the book, some scary librarian warriors arrive in a huge warship, and Hugo admits that they must have figured out that he has the 101 Ways to Get Rid of Sheep and Other Wooly Nuisances he stole years ago from the forbidden archives and never returned. Eon gets angry at poor Hugo and makes him return it to the librarian warriors. But, then it turns out the librarian warriors came to them for help, and had no idea the sheep book was ever missing. Again, this isn't automatically funny, but it made me smile because... I should have seen it coming, but I didn't.

Another repeated method of humor is joke set-up and, a paragraph later, joke pay-off, but I'm not gonna get into that, I've spent way too much time analyzing this old book for middle schoolers.

Okay, basically, this book's 2013 humor made me smile, maybe even chuckle, and feel immense nostalgia. And it was really short and just a nice relax-and-have-a-break-from-real-life book. Like, okay, it's a kids book, but when I'm stressed, I need to pretend I'm a kid again. And admittedly, at 16, I am still attached to the games, so reading this just... Made me happy for that reason. So, 5/5 for that.

But honestly, if I was gonna critique this book as if it wasn't written for middle schoolers in 2013, I would say it is really simple and pure commercial entertainment. Like, there's nothing deep or philosophical or intellectually stimulating in this book. The illustrations are really simple and don't add anything to the book. Except nostalgia—they smell like kool-aid in my mom's car when I was 9...Oops, getting off topic. Anyway, for the audience, I think the author did a great job. But if I was to critique it with the same standard I use for most books, I'd say it'd be a 3.5/5.

Therefore, I'll give this an overall 4/5, but my rating is biased. As you can clearly tell.

[Logan B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

First, Just to star off, ⚠️ SPOILER WARNING! ⚠️ there you go, don’t say I didn’t warn you. 2nd, I really enjoyed this book, way better that I imagined, the story only gets better and better. 3rd, has some sweet illustrations. 4th the ENDING! Oh my gosh! The last chapter called “The Book” the last words that Eon said to Spyro when investigating a secret forbidden book locked away in an underground vault, Spyro asks Eon (His master) what the forbidden book contains, and Eon sadly says that, “the book is a prophecy. And that the book contains the most dreadful predictions. (The novel describes Spyro having chills run down his back when hearing Eon explain this) Eon add “It contains the fall of the Skylanders…”

After me, as a read. Hearing this! And a long time fan of Skylanders! Est. 2011. I was like… 6 years old maybe. I’m almost 17 now. But anyways. THE FALL OF THE SKYLANDERS?! Is that even possible!? That… now that question sent chills running down my spine. Now I’m ready for rest of the books in the series. 🔯🍃💀⚙️⛰️🔥💧🌀

Till next time! ✌🏻

[Claudia · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is about the skylander spyro and his trials and tribulations of being a skylander. Readers read about a few different battles that Spyro and his skylander friends have to go through. They fight through evil toads and scary monsters. They even have to fight the evil Kaos. At the end they start to fight someone even more evil than Kaos, the librarians. The book is left with a to be continued situation.
I personally did not enjoy this book because I am not familiar with skylanders. The kid that I babysat over the summer is in love with skylanders so he would definitely enjoy this book. However, I think you have to be familiar with skylanders to enjoy this book.
The book would be perfect to suggest to a boy who has a hard time finding books he enjoys to read. This would be especially perfect if he like the video game and plays it at home. He would enjoy reading about his favorite video game and seeing the drama the skylanders have to go through to save the day.

[Nikky3 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Our new hero Kaos is DOOOOMING all evil!! Or is he still the skylanders bigest (well realy he is kinda short) bad guy?

Fell in love with the NetFlizx series, then fell in love with the game, now I am in love with the books.

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

My 7 year old LOVES reading these books.

[Cj Hamill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Simple read but very enjoyable!

[Elizabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this as a read aloud with my kindergartener. He enjoyed it quite a bit, and overall the story was pretty decent, but it was not very well written. There were some good vocab words for us to talk about, but there were also quite a few times that adjectives were repeated multiple times when a different word could easily have been used. There were also places where the spacing between words was off. There were some places that had no spaces between words and some that had overly large spaces. Of course that didn't bother my six year old at all, but annoying to me.

[Miss Ryoko · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was excited to see they are making Skylanders chapter books. So I read this one to see if it was one I could use at school. I was pleasantly surprised to see it wasn't written horribly like most books of this nature are. The writing is pretty decent. The story is interesting. And the illustrations are cute. So I was pleased! Even better, it is a book I could read at school! My students will be excited.

I might even have to read the rest of the books in the series for my own enjoyment!

[Js26jl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Intermediate - Independent

Rationale: I chose this book because Jack stated his previous interest and his desire should he have the opportunity to have a Skylander’s book. Whether he has played the game before won't matter as he will delight in the story -- and series --- as he reads.

Hook: Jack! I hear you’re interested in Skylanders -- how about this chapter book about a Skylander quest?

[A.R. Curry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surprisingly well written. Read it to my kids and they loved it. I play the games with them as well, and the author did a terrific job quickly introducing many of the characters without detracting from the forward progression of the story. Art work is a bit hit or miss, too cartoony. But book two is MUCH improved.

[Mender · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 1/2 stars. Surprisingly good, especially in comparison with the awful Angry Birds Transformers books. These are little chapter books with consistent characterization, humour and a decent plot. Matt's verdict: "Too cool!"

[Summer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Great for kids who are big fans of the series, but not much else.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was OKAY. Not very good description tho...