Claw the Giant Monkey

Beast Quest #8

by Adam Blade

Everyone in Avantia knows the terrors of the jungle: creatures that pluck men from the ground and eat them whole; plants whose rich scents could overwhelm a person at twenty paces. Few dare to enter--and fewer still return.

But Tom has no choice. The next stage of his journey lies at the very heart of the jungle, where a terrible creature resides, evil as the wizard who created him.

Genres: Fantasy, Childrens, Fiction, Adventure, Magic, High Fantasy, Middle Grade

115 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Adam Blade is the house name for the Working Partners Ltd. ghostwriters who write the Beast Quest and Sea Quest series.

Adam Blade is in his late twenties, and was born in Kent, England. His parents were both history teachers and amateur artists, and Adam grew up surrounded by his father’s paintings of historic English battles – which left a lifelong mark on his imagination. He was also fascinated by the ancient sword and shield that hung in his father’s office. Adam’s father said they were a Blade family heirloom.

As a boy, Adam would spend days imagining who could have first owned the sword and shield. Eventually, he created a character – Tom, the bravest boy warrior of them all. The idea for Beast Quest was born.

When Adam grew up and decided that he wanted to be a writer, he was stuck for ideas – until he remembered the old sword and shield, and the imaginary boy he had created when he was young. Adam decided to bring Tom fully to life so that readers could go on the kind of adventures that he always wanted to when he was that age… And still does, even though he’s grown up!

When he’s not writing Beast Quest books, Adam enjoys visiting museums and ancient battle sites. His main hobbies are fencing and football. He also spends a lot of time at home running around after his two exotic pets – a tarantula named Ziggy, and a capuchin monkey named Omar. These little rascals were the inspiration for two of the Beasts that Tom faces on his Quest – Arachnid and Claw.

Sadly, Adam does not have his own Fire-Dragon or Horse-Man. But he really wishes he did!

Reviews

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did not like this book because the forest in Avantia is very dangerous. I also did not like this book because Claw, the Giant Ape, was in the forest. Tom defeated Claw, the Giant Ape.

[Alexander Draganov · Rating 4 out of 5]

Том и Елена са успели да победят чудовищната сепия Зефа и така са си върнали първата част от мистичната златна броня, открадната от магьосника Малвел. Ала злодеят изглежда върви с крачка пред тях, отвличайки вълшебника Адуро. Сега двете деца и четириногите им спътници – вълкът Силвър и конят Сторм – трябва да продължат пътуването си към златната ризница, която се крие в Черната джунгла. Това е ужасно и горещо място, където гибелта дебне на всяка крачка, при това още преди там да се засели гигантската маймуна Клоу...

Цялото ревю прочетете на линка:
https://citadelata.com/claw-the-giant...

[Sam Curling · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nice

[Becky · Rating 2 out of 5]

"You killed me...why?"
"Mmm...monkey."
-not a quote from this book but I wish it was

Well, it only took me five books, but I found a Beast Quest that I can safely call "filler". In this book, Tom goes to an evil jungle (How can you tell it's evil? Because it's stinky, has scary plants, and has leeches in its swamps) and fights a giant monkey to get The Magical Golden Tank Top Chain Mail that the monkey is wearing on the book cover.

That's...literally all that really happens and it's nowhere near as fun or as exciting as the other books I've read in this series because a lot of it is "wow this monkey sure is fast". There's also a lot of copious "getting stuck in the jungle" sections to the point that this book just felt like a massive slog to get through even at the crisp 118 pages it's sporting. At one point Elenna gets kidnapped by the giant monkey because she has she/her pronouns but somehow doesn't get eaten even though the monkey does that with all of its other victims. The horse falls in a river because they had to take the horse to a giant rainforest for some reason. It's all very goofy and I think if you were really taking the time to read all of the Beast Quest books, you can just check this one off the list as one to be skipped.

I was so tempted to give this one star since this book really does feel like it's just going through the motions to get this part of the quest over with - and the first draft of this review did in fact sport a one star rating - but then the climax of this book comes swinging right out of the gates and smacks me right in the forehead by having Tom be so desperate for ideas on how to kill a giant monkey named Claw that he summons a dragon and has the dragon start burning down the rainforest that they're currently fighting in.

This book has our hero, our protagonist, our good guy, set fire to a rainforest. And at one point the book is like "animals are fleeing the flames, once colorful parrots are now the color of soot" to really drive this point home.

Honestly, the book gets an extra star just for the only book I've ever read where burning a rainforest was framed as a good thing since it's an evil rainforest. (and the book tries to go "it's just one spot that burned" but come on)

Boring book but it has that going for it.

---------
MONSTER SCORE

NAME: "Claw" has got to be one of the most generic monster names to ever exist, so I'm glad Malvel the Wizard used it up on a giant monkey pretty early on in the franchise just so he could get it over with. Not even throwing a "The Giant Monkey" at the end of it is enough to redeem it. You named the monster "Claw", Malvel. Get it together.
Score: 0/5.

DESIGN: Sadly, much like Claw's name, Claw The Giant Monkey is a rather generic and unexciting monster that feels out of place in a franchise where the cover space is reserved for giant sea monsters, dragons, and half-scorpion monster men. At the end of the day, he's just a big magically created monkey that looks like an awful mesh of many different monkey species both New and Old World that don't create anything more exciting than "it's a giant monkey that's evil". Even the illustrations have kind of a hard time using him since two of the illustrations are near-traces of each other, just with arm placement changed to make it look like a different drawing.
By the way, there are two reasons Claw is named Claw and neither of them are that great. The first reason is because the giant monkey has big clawed humanoid hands that can claw you. Yeah okay, fine I guess? Pretty much 80% of the Beast Quest monsters already have giant claws already since they're evil carnivore monsters. The other reason is because his giant monkey tail has a funny little scorpion claw at the end that he can use to stab things! Too bad this weapon is dodged pretty much 100% of the time to the point where the main protagonist suffers more damage from environmental elements like tree branches than Claw's claws.
Score: 0/5. Malvel the Dark Wizard needs to fire whoever sold him this magic spell because it's not doing its job very well.

POWERS/ABILITIES: Claw the Giant Monkey can do one thing and that's "be a big evil monkey that can travel really fast in the rainforest", and for the most part he does this pretty well. Some parts of the book involve just trying to find this dumb-looking monster wearing the mythical Tank Top of Gold and he does a lot of screaming and flinging himself from tree to tree so at least he behaves like a giant, out of control monkey beast. Still there's nothing that really screams "magical beast" about this and just feels like the main hero is attacking an asshole ape for this entire book rather than A Beast That Is Holding A Magical Object That Must Be Stopped.
Claw also seems to have a rudimentary amount of sapience because he likes to capture his prey and hold it captive in his giant monkey nest made out of bones rather than just killing them on the spot, although there's a part at the very beginning of this book where it sounds like he killed someone instantly so I'm actually not sure why he kidnapped Elenna and held her hostage instead of just snapping her neck with his giant monkey hands. (well okay I know there's several reasons and one of them is "they can't kill off the main female lead" but still)
Finally, to top it all off, since Claw has giant clawed hands and feet...he has a glaring weakness where he's weakened if he has to be on solid ground. This is how he's defeated.
Score: 1/5. Monkeys are fun and it was fun watching a kid armed with a sword trying to fight a giant monkey but also some magic couldn't have hurt especially when the snake man was able to cause a drought just by existing.

DEFEAT/DEATH SCENE: For some reason, defeating a giant monkey with claws for hands and feet had thwarted our main hero - someone who once fought a dragon in a volcano in an earlier book - to the point where his big idea on how to defeat Giant Monkey With Claw on Tail was to summon a dragon to burn down a rainforest. And even then, even after all the devastation, the monkey was never fought one on one with the main hero! Instead the hero sees the monster on the scorched ground, turns to the dragon he summoned, and shouts "okay! He's on the ground! Burn him!" and the summoned dragon just engulfs the monkey in flames, causing him to explode into a family of regular, non-evil monkeys.
This feels unfair. This is like those times in Pokemon where you've beaten the Elite Four and are shiny hunting and then accidentally run into a trainer and your level 70 Charizard just blazes through their team of level 10 rats. It just feels like the hero is tired of dealing with this stupid monkey monster and is pushing the Instant Win button rather than attempting to do some sort of sword fight.
Score: 1/5. While exploding into a pack of monkeys is fun, the fact that our hero fights the giant monkey with a summoned dragon is not.

FINAL RESULTS A "This is the true Bluster Kong" out of 10.

[Hend Alalwani · Rating 4 out of 5]

Personal reaction:
I like this book because it shows when people work together; they can achieve their goal no matter of the challenges that they will face. For example, when Tom and his friend’s Elenna, the wolf Silver, and Storm, the horse helped each other when they got in trouble.

Read aloud to second and third grades students. From this story, children will learn that if they have problems they need to think carefully and ask others for help. Also, they learn that having friends to support them is important.

Independent reading:
Children in from age 11 and up can read it by themselves. They will be able from it that they need to work hard to accomplish their goals. Also, they learn that bad people always will lose not matter how long it takes. Also, they will learn to listen to others people ideas and suggestions, like “when Elenna told Tom that to get the chain mail from the claw and fight him, they need to bring him to the ground.”

There are some pictures that show some event of the story, and those pictures are great because it shows the characters facial expression. Also, the language is good and the author description of the environment and the characters were good. For example, “Hot and dangerous, with dark shadows, poisonous plants, and spiders the size of your head.”” The river twists away behind those trees.”

[Ms. Myers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beast Quest

Beast Quest is about a group of friends trying to get pieces of armer to rescue there wizard friend because a dark wizard is hailing the wizard in his dungeon and the group of friends are trying to rescue there wizard friend.

Beast Quest is very interesting because a boy is fighting monsters to get pieces of armer to rescue his trapped wizard friend.

The Author is Adam Blade and Ezra Tucker and I think they done a good job writing these books.

This book is fiction.

The setting on this book is a island called Alantica.

The characters are Tom the hero and Emily the archer and spike the wolf and storm the horse.

The mood is scary and happy.

I recommend reading this book because a group of friends fight monsters.

[Libbie Wright · Rating 3 out of 5]

honestly. i was a little disappointed in this one. i felt like something was missing the whole time i was reading it, and i finally realized what it was. we didn’t get any townspeople in this book.
i would have loved to have seen what adam blade would have come up with for a jungle village and the people that would have been impacted by claw.
i also would have preferred that the chain mail give tom something other than courage, i feel like he definitely has enough of that based on all the quests he has already completed.
i did enjoy seeing ferno again, i do love me a good dragon.

[Jennifer · Rating 2 out of 5]

No where near the best in the series. Plodded among. Tried too hard. Things made no sense... they fall in water and have a dry blanket. Have you ever been in a jungle? There is no place for a running horse if there are vines everywhere. The dragon starts a jungle fire!!

[Jana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Once again, the series is pretty good. I think I would have liked this as a kid if I knew about them then. At times I saw the obvious or what the character said and immediately went, "You think??" I know it's a kids book, but I can't haven't that as my first thought. Still good either way.

[Stephen Wood · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another good book as part of the second series, I would have liked to have given this a 3.5 it was very good but just not as good as the first which I rated 4 stars. Although I very much liked the way in which they defeated the beast at the end.

[Kaden Leko · Rating 5 out of 5]

updating goodreads

[Esme · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mixed reviews from a year 3 class so have to go in the middle.

[Malakai · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very very very very good

[AJay · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read it when i was like 10 did enjoy it but not memorable

[FantasyWereld · Rating 4 out of 5]

Klauw de griezelaap is het vervolg op Zefa de reuzeninktvis en is daarmee het tweede deel in de serie Het gouden harnas, waarin Tom en zijn vriendin Elenna op zoek zijn naar een magisch gouden harnas. De kwaadaardige tovenaar Malvel heeft het gestolen en in zes delen over Avantia verspreid. Elk deel wordt bewaakt door een verschrikkelijk monster. Tom en Elenna hebben Zefa de reuzeninktvis ondertussen verslagen en hebben het eerste deel van het harnas bemachtigd: een gouden helm. Maar hun avontuur is nog lang niet voorbij. Het volgende deel is namelijk verstopt in het donkere oerwoud en wordt beschermd door Klauw de griezelaap. Zal het de twee ook deze keer lukken het verschrikkelijke monster te verslaan?

Nog spannender
Klauw de griezelaap gaat verder waar Zefa de reuzeninktvis is geëindigd, wat betekent dat je vrijwel meteen weer in de spanning valt. Net als deel 1 leest ook dit verhaal weer erg snel en verveelt het geen minuut. Tom en Elenna gaan samen met Toms paard Storm en Elenna’s wolf Zilver meteen op zoek naar het volgende deel van het harnas. Volgens de magische kaart die de twee aan het begin van hun reis van tovenaar Aduro hebben meegekregen, is dat een gouden maliënhemd en ligt het verstopt in het donkere oerwoud. Maar iedereen in Avantia weet dat het donkere oerwoud een gevaarlijke plek is, vol vleesetende planten en bloeddorstige dieren. Weinig mensen durven het aan om erin te gaan en nog minder mensen komen er weer uit…

Lees de gehele recensie op:
http://www.fantasywereld.nl/recensies...

[Katie Foth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I chose to read this book because one of my readers, a nine-year-old boy, enjoys this series, and I wanted to check out the content and quality. I found the book decently written with shorter sentences and lots of action. The main character, Tom, and his horse Storm travel into the jungle of Avantia along with Elenna and her silver wolf. They search for the enchanted armor of the Master of the Beasts, which the Dark Wizard Malvel has stolen. Tom already has the helmet that Malvel hid with Zepha the Monster Squid. Now he is searching for the chain mail, which Malvel has hidden with a giant ape sporting a dangerous claw on his long tail. Tom knows where to find it because he has an enchanted map. Tom must find all of the pieces of armor in order to free his wizard-friend Aduro from Malvel's power.

Elenna has to rescue Tom and then Tom has to rescue Elenna. To defeat the ape, he has to call on the help of a mythical creature (a dragon). I suspect the series repeats this formula with minor variations. Nothing deep. The characters seem stereotyped (flat). The story seems benign overall--a page-turner because of the action, but not creepy.

[Daken Howlett · Rating 3 out of 5]

La ricerca dell'armatura d'oro continua,ma la struttura del nuovo volume è decisamente troppo simile al precedente(e,per estensione,ai volumi del ciclo precedente)e la nuova creatura malvagia insieme allo scontro finale,non sono tra i più convincenti o creativi nella serie,spero in un miglioramento nei volumi successivi.

[Patrick Puckridge · Rating 5 out of 5]

action is awesome 10/10

[Tiffiny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Little did I know my husband read this one to Ryan. Up until recently "only Mommy can read chapter books" to Ryan. = )

[Xavier Driggs · Rating 4 out of 5]

good book.great series

[Rahul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dooooooooo oo,ooø. N. Nnnnnn. N. Bbnnbnbbvbvgbfbfbfbfbvb vbvvvo. I. I. I bin I. I. O. Ooiioó.

[Elisia Crawford · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great series for my son... he loves to read and the series was a hit for him!

[Justin]

The book was quite interesting and showed how the hero tom could get the chain mail armor and this shows how he starts to get the golden armor

[RG · Rating 3 out of 5]

www.no.com

[David]

This book talk is from India's a monkey claw, with the right hand catch this the monkey claw can achieve three wishes, but these are a price to pay, such as to the money without you think loved ones of life and so on.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

My enjoyment of the book was secondary to what my son thought as we read it together. He likes them judging by the continued interest in picking up the next book. Reluctant readers are not easy to grab with just anything. He has loved the continuing storyline through the previous interconnected series as well as this ongoing quest. He tries to guess what the next beast might be before we start the next one. I sometimes think this might be our last one to read together as I hope he will continue our bedtime ritual himself of reading before bed, but I guess we will at least finish the series.