This third book in the How To Train Your Dragon series continues the adventures of Hiccup, his dragon Toothless, and his best mate Fishlegs as they attempt to learn how to be a real viking.
The book begins with Hiccup and Fishlegs attempting to navigate in their own, handmade boat, The Hopeful Puffin. As part of their training, they and their ilk have been set the task of boarding a peaceful fisherman’s boat and scaring them with the Hooligan Warcry.
Unfortunately, The Hopeful Puffin is a mess of a boat and quickly becomes lost. When they finally come upon a ship to board, it doesn’t belong to a peaceful fisherman… but a roman army. While Hiccup and Fishlegs escape unscathed, Toothless is taken prisoner along with half of Hiccup’s book, ‘How To Speak Dragonese’. Hiccup must then set about convincing his father, Stoick the Vast, to rescue Toothless and believe his story: that the Romans are planning to start a war amongst the vikings by capturing Hiccup (the heir of the Hooligan tribe) along with the heir of the Bog Burglar tribe, setting up the two tribes for war.
As usual, Hiccup’s attempts at convincing his father of the truth fall on deaf ears and Hiccup is captured.
Will Hiccup be able to come up with yet another Clever Plan to escape the romans? Will Stoick the Vast believe his son and send a war party to rescue him, rather than start a war with the Bog Burglars? Is Toothless still alive? And why does that prefect that is keeping Hiccup captured look so familiar….?
As usual, my measure of this book is best done by my 6 year old son, who I was reading it to aloud. He scored it 4 square roman shields out of 5.
(I would have scored it slightly lower, as there were some unnecessary fat jokes and weird focus on the size of the Bog Burglar tribe leader’s bosom that made me uncomfortable…)