I'm always on the lookout for a good dragon tale, and we enjoyed this one, although the dragon takes a while to surface.
The cover led me to be expect a Halloween / haunted house / type story, but that's far from what you get with Alfie Bloom's tale.
It starts, wonderfully enough (!!!loved this opening!!!), with a murder not seemingly related to Alfie or the castle at all. Elderly Nora Emmett goes out with her gun to shoo rustlers away from her sheep and finds so much more. Poor Nora. She's goner in the first three pages, and you, the reader, are left to wonder what -- exactly -- got her.
Enter Alfie. He inherits Hexbridge Castle, moves to a new town and enrolls in a new school with the world's most seriously twisted twin sister Headmistresses, Murkle and Snitch (not their real names, of course, but you get the idea).
There's all sorts of rooms and treasures in the castle that will open only to Alfie, like the flying bear (rug) and a heavy, padlocked and secured portal in the basement. There's a message from 600 year old sorcerer Orin Hopcraft, guiding Alfie and challenging him to find certain things before... he's manipulated into opening the castle to Murkle and Snitch.
I won't reveal why, just know it's all related, and I enjoyed the plot twists and turns enormously of this wonderful dragon tale!
