Caramel reviews How To Ride A Dragon’s Storm (Book #7 of How to Train Your Dragon Series) by Cressida Cowell

Last week, Caramel reviewed the sixth book, A Hero’s Guide to Deadly Dragons, of Cressida Cowell’s How To Train Your Dragon series. Today he continues the trend with the seventh book: How To Ride A Dragon’s Storm. As usual Sprinkles is asking questions and taking notes.

Sprinkles: So we are now on to the seventh book of the How to Train Your Dragon series. Caramel, tell us what happens in this one.

Caramel: Hiccup and his friends get kidnapped by two Raptortongues and are taken to the American Dream 2, a ship made by the Hysterics.

S: Wait, who are the Hysterics? What is a Raptortongue?

C: Hysterics are another tribe and they are enemies of the Hairy Hooligans. We saw them in earlier books. Raptortongues are a type of dragon. Here is a picture of what they look like.

S: Hmm, so Hiccup is in trouble yet again!

C: Yes, isn’t he always?

S: It seems like it. Okay, tell me more about the book.

C: The Hysterics are trying to get to America, and the Romans are around, too. I’m not sure that makes sense timewise, but plotwise it works pretty well.

S: I know what you mean. Wikipedia tells us that Vikings were most active in raiding other European locations from the 8th century to the 11th century. And the Western Roman Empire had already ended by then. Wikipedia tells us they declined and fell from power around the fifth century. But the Eastern Roman empire survived, and we know them today as the Byzantines. Still those could not be the ones our Vikings in these books are interacting with. So I agree with you. Timewise things are a bit off. But oh well.

C: Well, I did not know any of this, but I sort of thought there was something wrong with the timeline. Then again, Romans don’t show up in this book. They only show up in How to Train Your Dragon, How to Be a Pirate, and in How to Speak Dragonese.

S: Then why did you bring them up?

C: I just thought of them, because they are also bad guys that keep showing up, like the Hysterics.

S: So what three words would you use to describe this book?

C: Funny, adventurous, and apparently historically inaccurate.

S: Well, it is fiction after all. And there were no Romans in this one, so maybe we can ignore that part?

C: Sure. I now want to read the back of the book to our readers:

UH-OH-UH-OH-UH-OH, thought Hiccup as the Raptortongue folded back his wings, preparing to land on deck. The barbarians let out a cheer as the Raptortongue let Hiccup go, and laughed wildly as he sprawled on the deck, with Camicazi and Fishlegs being dropped beside him. “COME BACK AND FIGHT LIKE VIKINGS, YOU COWARDLY BATS!” shrieked Camicazi, in a twist of fury at being kidnapped by the Raptortongues, and their new captors only laughed more.

S: That is a good introduction to the story Caramel. I can see it made you want to dive right in and read all the way through.

C: Yup.

S: So are you planning to read the next one now?

C: Yes! And I will review it for the blog too.

S: That sounds good. So let us wrap this up then. What do you want to say to our readers?

C: Stay tuned for more book bunny reviews!