English Cymraeg

Dungeon Runners: Hero Trial

Name: Dungeon Runners: Hero Trial
Rating: 5 (1 reviews)

by Kieran Larwood, illustrated by Joe Todd-Stanton

Interest age: 9 to 11
Reading age: 8+

Published by Nosy Crow, 2024

Adventure
Coming-of-age
Fantasy
Funny

About this book

Excitement levels in Zerb are sky high as the season final of Dungeon Runners gets underway. Will the Ultima Squad win the league for the fifth year in a row or can the Night Beasts grab a few extra points by defeating tonight’s monster or finding the hidden treasure?

Being a gnorf (half gnome, half dwarf) Kit isn’t classic dungeon-runner material but when one of the lower league teams has a nasty run-in with a frost dragon, there’s space at the bottom for a brand-new team. And when Breg, the bullying troggle, challenges him to enter the trials, he finds himself accepting. But with no skills and no teammates, what are his chances of success? Or even of getting through the trial alive?

As a gnorf, a vegan vampire, a trainee mage and a tiny green gobrot do battle with a squelchy blob monster and teams of spidlings and hedgepigs, they form an unlikely alliance that shows how teamwork, determination, and even kindness, can be more effective than bullying and brute force.

Presented in large, clear font and with black and white illustrations throughout, this funny, exciting, imaginative adventure story is a great introduction to fantasy fiction for newly independent readers.

About the author

Kieran Larwood, author of Freaks, was the winner of the Times/Chicken House Children’s Fiction Competition 2011. He graduated from Southampton University with a degree in English, and also did a foundation year at Falmouth College of Art. He has been passionate about stories ever since he first read The Hobbit at age six. Kieran is also one of only two male reception class teachers on the Isle of Wight. His days mainly consist of singing nursery rhymes, tying shoelaces, trying to work out who has had an ‘accident’ by sense of smell alone, and vast, endless mountains of paperwork.

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