Krabb Master of the Sea

Beast Quest #25

by Adam Blade

The Mistress of the Beasts has been placed under a spell and her dangerous beasts are destroying the kingdom. Tom promises to free her, but Krabb attacks his boat. Will his quest stop here?

Genres: Fantasy, Childrens, Adventure, Magic

119 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2012

About the author

Adam Blade is the house name for the Working Partners Ltd. ghostwriters who write the Beast Quest and Sea Quest series.

Adam Blade is in his late twenties, and was born in Kent, England. His parents were both history teachers and amateur artists, and Adam grew up surrounded by his father’s paintings of historic English battles – which left a lifelong mark on his imagination. He was also fascinated by the ancient sword and shield that hung in his father’s office. Adam’s father said they were a Blade family heirloom.

As a boy, Adam would spend days imagining who could have first owned the sword and shield. Eventually, he created a character – Tom, the bravest boy warrior of them all. The idea for Beast Quest was born.

When Adam grew up and decided that he wanted to be a writer, he was stuck for ideas – until he remembered the old sword and shield, and the imaginary boy he had created when he was young. Adam decided to bring Tom fully to life so that readers could go on the kind of adventures that he always wanted to when he was that age… And still does, even though he’s grown up!

When he’s not writing Beast Quest books, Adam enjoys visiting museums and ancient battle sites. His main hobbies are fencing and football. He also spends a lot of time at home running around after his two exotic pets – a tarantula named Ziggy, and a capuchin monkey named Omar. These little rascals were the inspiration for two of the Beasts that Tom faces on his Quest – Arachnid and Claw.

Sadly, Adam does not have his own Fire-Dragon or Horse-Man. But he really wishes he did!

Reviews

[Becky · Rating 3 out of 5]

Through the murky water a shadow loomed.
Krabb.
-an actual quote from this book

I'm going to be blunt. I read this book entirely because the monster in this book was a giant crab named Krabb. I have zero attachment to this series even though I've read four of them now. I just wanted to see a crab named Krabb get stabbed (by a sword).

The rest of the book is also very decent for a Beast Quest book (at the time I'm typing out this review, I have read an astounding total of 4 out of a 80+, mind you) and now tells me that about 25 books into the series, they actually do away with my least favorite Beast Quest trope from the earlier books and actually take Tom's overpowered artifact-based abilities away after one of the books! What a great idea honestly. The overpowered "and then Tom activated his superstrength" abilities were getting ridiculous especially when his companion was just this regular human armed with regular arrows.

As for the plot of the book, since this is the start of a new Beast Quest, a lot of this book is shuffling the new game pieces onto the game board. A new land has to be introduced, a new villain shows up, a kindly old wizard has to talk about the next task, a magic prophecy is dropped. All that good stuff. Since this book is only 128 pages long and a good chunk of that has to be dedicated to fighting the monster, that means that some of the reoccurring characters - namely the two animal companions that are in every book - have to show up since they have to be in the new series but then they get nothing to do. Storm the horse hilariously only shows up via a magic teleportation to nearly drown in a boating accident.

But, to the book's credit, there is an actual noticeable attempt to give Elenna something to do. She actually gets scenes in this book! She helps! Girl power!

Also the new villain that this book introduces is named Velmal. He is also a dark wizard like Malvel. Velmal the wizard is a twin to Malvel the wizard. This is fine.

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MONSTER SCORE

NAME: I was gonna just say "Krabb" and leave it at that, but I am amazed by the name "Krabb" for the giant sentient crab monster because now it creates the unique situation where a bunch of characters are all saying the name "Krabb" out loud to each other but never spell it out like Master Xehanort explaining that the χ-blade's spelling in Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep by manifesting a Greek letter hologram in his hand. So, for all we know, they could just be picturing the spelling as "Crab". Crab the crab.
TIME FOR KRABB.
Score: 5/5. I read this book because of this name, highest score.

DESIGN: Sadly, Krabb doesn't truly live up to his name by having a very middle-of-the-road giant monster crab design that gives him a generic scary monster face with random face tusks rather than the more scientifically accurate route by giving him actual crab facial features. My guess is that, since there's illustrations in the book and he has to emote in them, they kinda had to give the crab eyes that were easier to draw, but the crab stalk eyes will still be missed.
I do, however, like the spider crab legs, the fact that Krabb is so huge that he can cut sea vessels in half, and the fact that the underside of Krabb is covered in barnacles, seaweed, and other sea debris. That's fun.
Score: 3/5. It's fine. It's a giant crab. Crabs are cool at least.

POWERS/ABILITIES: While the book is called "Krabb: Master of the Sea", Krabb himself does not have control over the elements of water and cannot bend the seas to his whim. He makes waves but that's more from water displacement from his massive crab bulk rather than anything supernatural. Instead, his main powers are "being a real big monster crab" and "having really big crab pincers that he can use to grab and eat things while being a real big monster crab". At one point Krabb grabs and splits a shark in half to show that He Means Business(tm) but then that shark becomes the only thing on his body count besides a net full of fish.
Also, one of his claws is dripping green venom! ...this venom isn't that bad and just kinda makes you fall unconscious for a while until a protagonist shows up with some herbs.
I feel that, honestly, the venom is redundant if you have pincers that can rip things in half, but at least they have a rather gross story reason for the claw full of venom, but I'm getting to that.
Score: 2/5. Krabb is a crab and he is big, but that's all he's got going for him.

DEFEAT/DEATH SCENE: Thankfully, we do not see the end of Krabb, for Krabb is actually a peaceful, good monster that has to be freed from his magical enslavement rather than an evil monster that has to be cut down in the heat of battle. Unfortunately, his defeat scene has some gross physical implications. After nearly drowning because he dropped a magical artifact that helps him breathe underwater but only while holding it, Tom decides to take a random guess and stab the claw that's dripping venom, causing a venom cloud to spurt out and for Krabb to suddenly not be evil. Turns out it was the venom in the claw that was making Krabb evil!
In other words, the main protagonist had to lance the evil out of Krabb's body like someone popping a zit.
No matter how you phrase it or what name you call it, being defeated in battle because a bodily fluid squirted out of a wound at a very high pressure is always humiliating.
Score: 1/5. Eww.

FINAL RESULTS A "Krabb" out of 10.

[Zeerin Star · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is about where I started to realize that the 'Adam Blade' ghostwriters were losing their collective shit. Tom, via the ghostwriters, is constantly forgetting powers he has, such as, as pertains to this book, the ability to not fricking drown while he has his shield and that he has two different healing talismans. He and Elenna come across the prologue character, who's wounded, and after the first healing talisman fails completely ignore the other healing talisman. And then the special ability Tom gets in this book to deal with the Beast is the power to not drown while holding a specific pearl, even though Sepron's tooth from way back in book 2 does the same thing, but when he has his shield. Note: technically the pearl gives specifically the ability to breathe underwater. It was about a year between me reading the series up till this book and this book, so I don't remember if the way Sepron's tooth works is also by allowing Tom to breathe underwater. But it's a moot point when Tom loses the pearl in the fight against the Beast, but *still has his shield*. However, instead of trying to move his shield into position on his arm (two of his other shield talismans specifically require him to be properly holding the shield, as opposed to having it slung on his back, so I'm assuming Sepron's token is the same way), he just gives up and would've drowned if the Beast hadn't returned the pearl to him. It can be argued that Sepron's tooth might not have worked in waters controlled by a different Sea-Beast, and if that was the case that would've been perfectly fine *if whoever the ghostwriter for this book was would've told us that*. But they didn't. Tom didn't even try to use Sepron's token. If he had tried, and it failed, that would've been a good narrative point. "Oh no, my Avantian tokens might not work properly in Gwildor! I need to be more careful in the future." Boom, that's all that's needed and the entire situation would be fixed. Instead he doesn't even try to use his shield and we have this gem: "He needed the Mistress of the Beasts' token if he was going to survive." (Actual quote from the book)
I know that last part was a repeat of something I said earlier, but I really want to drill home the screw-up that was made. And it gets worse later on. This book forgot things from previous books, ones from different sets. Some of the later books forget things that happened in the same set and, in at least one book, within the same book.

[Chloé Berry · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read it in english cus i was bored and it low key popped off 🤩😍

[Stephen Wood · Rating 4 out of 5]

a brilliant next book in the sarga with lots of twists and turns I’m looking forward to uncovering more information and finding out about the prophecy and what it means for the young hero’s

[Astrid · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read the Swedish translation to give a short presentation about it. Reading children's books is something adults that have just begun to pick up a language are encouraged to do, but while the book was easy to read - it was also pretty boring. The thing that bothered me the most was that it is obviously a boy's book, since the girl-companion is... well, she's there, but that's about it. Having a male hero in a book is great, but one would assume that we have entered a decade in which one could construct a story with a set of characters that both boys and girls can identify with.

[Andre]

Beast Quest Series 5 Collection: Krabb Master Of The Sea, Hawkite Arrow Of The Air, Rokk The Walking Mountain, Koldo The Arctic Warrior, Trema The Earth Lord, Amictus The Bug

[Grant McNevan("The End is Where We Begin") Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty awesome. I can't believe they have like 7 series. I'm pretty far behind.

[Cas ♛ · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's been a long time since I've read these, and just reading the first of the shade of death again, I remembered the world I had almost forgotten. These are just the best.

[Merajul · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book is interesting and mysterious
but i would have liked this book more if it had a little bit of comedy

[Parhom]

I want to read this book