‘The Beasts in the Jar’ is the first in the Greek Beasts and Heroes series. In this book Atticus the Greek storyteller goes off on a ship with his donkey to go to a storytelling festival on the slopes of Mount Ida near Troy. On the way he tells tales of Greek myths and legends.

At the beginning of the book there’s a map showing where Atticus travels during the story. I thought this was very useful and interesting.

The tales in this book include Pandora’s Box, which is the story the book is named after, and many other wonderful myths such as the tale of Icarus. It has lots of pictures in it, I like the ones of monsters!

I love all Greek legends and I think this is a very good version for children, even my little brothers could understand it. We read it during our lessons at home. I was always so excited when the time came to read it. Lucy Coats is a very good writer of children’s books. I think the Greek myths are more for boys than for girls.

4 and a half stars

‘Arcta the Mountain Giant’ is the third in the Beast Quest series. In it Tom must free Arcta the Mountain Giant from the evil wizard Malvel’s spell with the help of his horse Storm, his friend Elena and her wolf Silver. His shield now contains some power from both Ferno the Fire Dragon and Sepron the Sea Serpent which should come in handy.

I think this beast is a very good one, especially because it’s blind-folded. He senses Tom as he’s not able to see him. I think Malvel should have put some sort of lock on him instead of the blindfold if he wanted to stop Tom from freeing the Beast.

The avalanches that Arcta creates were very cool. I really like it when Tom walked across the dangerous mountains with rock falling around him, I couldn’t stop reading until I found out what happened. I was very worried about Elenna and Silver when they get trapped.

This is a very exciting book, when I play Beast Quest with my brothers we always have Arcta in our game.

4 and a half stars

In this, the second in the Beast Quest series, Tom and Elenna go on an exciting adventure to find Sepron the Sea Serpent and free it from an evil curse which the bad wizard Malvel put on it. In this thrilling book Tom battles with the sea serpent, will he succeed in this underwater quest to defeat the evil wizard’s plans?

Sepron is a very scary beast, I like him very much. He’s the scariest monster I have seen so far in the Beast Quest books apart from Torgor the Minotaur [Beast Quest Number 13].

In each of the Beast Quest books Malvel just leaves Tom and Elenna to fight the beasts, I think he should do more to try to stop them. Maybe he could put protective spells around the beasts, which Tom and Elenna can only break by cracking a really difficult code.

I really like the illustrations in this book; they look really cool and are very detailed.

This book is pretty exciting. I am actually on number 13 of the Beast Quest series. I don’t think this is quite as good as the later Beast Quest books in which Tom has golden armour to help him; they just seem to get better and better.

4 and a half stars