How to Cheat a Dragon’s Curse, Cressida Cowell

Can Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III come and be the hero yet again? This time, a Venomous Vorpent has stung Hiccups best friend, Fishlegs. The symptoms: fever, runny nose and worst of all, episodes of madness. Fishlegs has charged down a mountain on skis towards the craziest of all Viking tribes: the Hysterics. To save him, Hiccup had to fire an arrow in Norbert the Nutjob’s (The chief of the Hysterics tribe) bottom! Fishlegs also shouted some very rude words to Hiccups dad, Stoick the Vast, chief of the Hairy Hooligan tribe. This disease is fatal and Fishlegs could die in less than 24 hours.

The only possible cure to this sickness is the vegetable- no-one-dares-name, in other words, the potato. This is a lot harder than you think as America is the first continent to grow potatoes and we are in the Viking times. Conclusion: America has not been discovered yet. According to the Vikings, the world is as flat as a pancake, if you sail too far east or west, well, lets just say that’s a bad idea. Luckily, Norbert the Nutjobs father, Bigjob, has been to America and brought back the potato as proof of being there, the only problem is that Hiccup is probably not one of Norbert’s best friends at the moment, as he had to shoot him in the bottom. Fortunately, Camicazi, Hiccups friend from the Bog-Burglar tribe has enthusiastically agreed to come with Hiccup on his quest for the potato.

Will Hiccup and Camikazi manage to find the potato before they are discovered? Will Norbert accept to give them the potato? They don’t even know what the potato looks like. How are they supposed to find the right thing? I found this book quite hard to get into as I’m used to reading books that drag you into the story immediately. From my point of view, this book doesn’t grab the reader’s attention until further in the story, but once I had started reading it, I did not put the book down until I was finished. The book itself is fun to read, as the illustrations are quite funny. The writing is also a bit silly along with the title. This book deserves 9/10. I took away one mark as in the story, an object is found and Cressida Cowell doesn’t fully explain what the object is. But in general, this is an astonishingly well-written book.

~ by Raphy T. on February 24, 2009.