This first step into older MG fiction by the talented husband and wife team who write the hugely popular Sam Wu books is a thrilling adventure set in the mountainous landscape of China.
It opens with a teenage Californian surfing champion, Billy Chan, reluctantly arriving in China to attend a Mandarin culture and language summer camp. He finds that he is in the company of a group of talented teenagers who have all been nominated by their teachers or coaches to attend this unique camp and anxiety creeps in that his patchy Mandarin skills will leave him performing badly compared to the other kids. After a bone-rattling and stomach-churning drive up into the mountainous camp, Billy is pretty convinced that he would rather be back home surfing in the warm sea. However, he starts to form a bond with Irish lad, Dylan O’Donnell and is pleased that he is placed in the same cabin as him by the ancient Chinese camp leader Lao-Jin (Old Gold). On the first night, in the light of the campfire, Old Gold recounts the ancient myth of Dragon Mountain: the battle for supremacy between good and evil dragons and the source of the “River of Blood”.
The next morning the students are divided into teams of four. Billy and Dylan are placed together. Their additional team members are the outrageously confident Charlotte Bell, not just the holder of the Little Miss of the South title for four years, but also two-time ju-jitsu under-14 world champion, and the quiet, shy, dreamer Ling-Fei the adopted granddaughter of Old Gold. Each team of four is given a challenge to retrieve a specific item on the first morning and informed that the winning team will earn extra privileges throughout their time at camp. This is all the incentive that highly competitive Charlotte needs and she leaves her team in no doubt that they must win!
However, when they are confronted by a fierce tiger as well as an earthquake after taking a forbidden shortcut through a bamboo plantation, they find themselves caught up in a magical adventure that they could not have imagined.
The combination of contemporary teenagers bound up into a mythical fantasy is deftly handled, with the teens reacting in believable ways to the incredible scenario of bonding with dragons in a battle to save both the human and dragon realms from devastation caused by the evil dragon “The Great One” whose ambition is to rule over both kingdoms. This malicious dragon is aided by his followers, The Noxious or Nox-wings, an army of dark dragons.
Bravery, loyalty, strength and truth are the values in the hearts of the four teenage protagonists which have bound them to their dragons and alongside their dragon-bestowed powers, arm them for a battle with a fearsome enemy.
I don’t want to give away any spoilers so I won’t go into any further details about the plot. This is a fast-paced fantasy adventure, likely to be devoured in a couple of days by confident upper key stage 2 readers; the plot grips you more tightly than a dragon’s claws. Equally it would be a great story for a teacher or librarian to read aloud…but be prepared for demands from the children for “one more chapter!” The book ends on an absolute cliff-hanger and I certainly hope I don’t have to wait too long to find out what happens next!
Highly recommended for fans of Harry Potter, Septimus Heap and Percy Jackson.
I am most grateful to #NetGalley and Simon and Schuster Children’s Books for allowing me access to an e-ARC of Dragon Mountain. The book will be published on 3 September 2020.
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