Title: How to be a Pirate
Author: Cressida Cowell
Type: Fiction
Page Count/Review Word Count: 242
Rating: 4/5
Hurrah, another How to Train Your Dragon book! I’ve been reading these out of series order, but it doesn’t really matter because they work pretty well as standalones. It’s also the only real way I can read it because I tend to pick up the books from charity shops to keep costs down.
In this one, Hiccup and the tribe are visited by “Alvin the Poor But Honest Farmer”, who tells them that there’s some treasure for them to find. The tribe heads off on a quite frankly suicidal quest to find said treasure, and then a whole heap of shenanigans ensue. There are brushes with death, plenty of dragons and a number of deadly traps that put our heroes (and our villains) in peril.
What I liked about this one is that it follows a lot of the fundamental rules of storytelling, and that almost gives it the feel of a fairy tale or a classic children’s book from the 1900s. Each of the How to Train Your Dragon books can be read as either standalones or as a part of the overall series, but this one has stood out above the others and seems like one of the best places to start outside the very first book in the series. It’s worth reading!
Cressida Cowell
