The Reluctant Knight
Sally Odgers

Koala 2002
128pp., pbk., $12.95
0864614195

Series: Knightfall

The Reluctant Knight is the first book in the imaginative triology of Knightfall and is a great read.

Sally Odgers is the amazing author of the series. In The Reluctant Knight, she writes about fantasy creatures including hungry dragons, determined dragonets and wild denizees of the dark, as well as oblivious knights, strange kings and magical serving damsels. Greg Rodgers is the creative illustrator who illustrated the lively eye-catching pictures which are found all through the book.

I’ll now tell you a bit about the story.

One gloomy day Simon night decides to escape from his stuck-up step mum, his bully step sister and his poor love struck father Nipper. One night he escapes to a nearby forest were he agrees [with a guy called Porter] to ride his mare called ‘Traveler’. While he is riding in the forest he is impossibly captured off the back of ‘Traveler’ by a pearly fire breathing dragon. Strangely Simon appears in an unknown mystical land where the pearly dragon named Peggy is forced to drop him. Simon is found by a mysterious damsel called Becca. Simon is then forced to battle for good King Shortshanks against the Dragon King, to conquer the dragons land, but the dragons have other ideas.

Is it possible for the very untrained Simon to beat the huge fire breathing Dragon King, or will Simon become toasted human roast ?

When I read The Reluctant Knight I found the text sometimes was a little hard to understand and it was hard to understand what was happening and where you were in the story because the scenes changed so quickly. I also found that a lot of the words were hard to make out so the story sometimes didn’t make sense.

The Reluctant Knight was a magical make believe story but it was sometimes lifelike and it was possible to relate with real life feelings. I recommend this book to kids around the age of 8 to 12 because I enjoyed it a lot and I am 12 and maybe if you were younger then 8 you wouldn’t understand this book as much.

I suggest you read The Reluctant Knight just before you go to bed because it makes your dreams run wild!

Elle 12 North Coast NSW