Goblins by Philip Reeve

[Robert]

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Robert]

Goblins by Philip Reeve
This story starts well with our main character Skarper having been catapulted from the top of the very, very high Blackspike Tower. The first few chapters are told in flashback to set up the back story of Skarper and his Goblin Clan The Backspike Boys. The Blackspike Boys live in one of eight towers surrounding the magically sealed and deserted massive central citadel of the City of Clovenstone.
Clovenstone is deserted by the squishy ones (humans), the towers are inhabited by the different goblin clans who spend their time fighting and hoarding and the crumbling city surrounding it is populated by a supporting cast of trolls, twiggy monsters of some kind and a good supporting cast of bogglins to name a few.
After Skarper survives his fall from the sky, having fallen from favour with his King The mighty Knobbler (he wears pink bloomers and has a sword called Mr Chop-U-Up) Skarper is soon joined on a quest not of his choosing by Henwyn the cheese monger turned adventurer, The just past middle aged Princess Ned and the mysterious Sable Conclave (none of these dark magicians can do magic).
What follows is a fantasy quest where it looks like everybody and anybody is trying to fulfil prophecy, enter the sealed keep and regain the thrown and magic only spoken of in the old tales.
This books starts very well but does get the vast majority of it’s jokes and gags out of the way very early leaving little of the promised humour for the rest of the book. This was an average predictable story with few twists and turns but some nice atmospheric descriptions to make this fantasy world realistic and interesting. Unfortunately this book left me wanting more from it than it had to give but is was not terrible.I would use this book as a reader for KS2 who like fantasy or Philip Reeve's other books. There is also potential for guided reading on some of the descriptive passages.