Dragonborn (The Flaxfield Quartet, Volume 1)

‘Many miles. Many months. Many wounds. Many changes.’ Thus 12-year-old Sam reviews the journey he has taken, in almost 500 pages, as he pursues his vocation from apprentice to fully-fledged wizard. It has been a colourful, incident-filled experience, one with its own magic and one entertainingly packed with a diverting range of creatures such as ‘memmonts’, ‘roffles’, ‘flatterflits’, ‘moonerwards’, and – beware! – ‘takkabakks’, plus quite a gallery of wizards of various persuasions and inclinations. And then there’s Canterstock College, a sort of wizard academy, presided over by one Professor Frestful and counting among its staff one Dr Duddle. (‘There was a lot to understand about this college,’ Sam reflects soon after his arrival.) Sounds slightly familiar? Well, fans of the genre may detect echoes of Tolkien, Rowling and the Colfer of Artemis Fowl, but Forward’s novel has its own voice and strength, not least in the doughtiness of its young traveller, his loyalty to the memory of his former master Flaxfield and his attachment to Starback, the most amiably reliable of dragon companions. Occasional moments of ornate over-writing intersperse the text – ‘Flashes of gold thread grasped at the sunlight and ran like veins in marble through the deep blue green of the silk’ – but, in general, the prose is readable and accessible. The ground has been enticingly prepared for the three volumes which will follow.