The Final Trial

Volume XXIX / Issue 40 - June 16 / 2023

The Final Trial

Author: 
Kelley Armstrong
Illustrated by: 
Xavière Daumarie
Series: 
A Royal Guide to Monster Slaying: Book 4
Toronto, ON: Puffin, 2022
293 pp., hardcover & ebook, $19.99 (hc.)
ISBN: 
9780735270206 (hc.) 9780735270213 (ebook)
Grades: 
Grades 4-7
Ages: 
Ages 9-12
Review by: 
Dave Jenkinson
4
Excerpt: 

Six months ago, a gryphon broke through a barn roof and grabbed me, and I thought I was going to die. I’d been snatched from the earth and wrenched into the sky, and I’d never felt so helpless in my life. But that was then. Before Jannah died. Before I became the royal monster hunter-elect. Before I captured that gryphon and raised her baby. Before I won the respect of Malric and Wilmot and even, maybe, Dain. Before I proved that I deserved to carry the ebony sword.

I had learned so much. Come so far. I barely recognize that girl in my memory, the one who’d thoughtlessly escaped her castle lockdown to take on a gryphon. That girl was brave, but she didn’t think things through, didn’t consider the consequences of her actions.

I am not that girl. Yet in one swoop, the dragon slams me back into that girl, snatched from the earth and wrenched into the sky, and all I can do is clutch Jacko and hold onto him for dear life.

The Final Trial brings a successful close to a middle school fantasy quartet that began with A Royal Guide to Monster Slaying, followed by The Gryphon’s Lair and The Serpent’s Fury. By now, followers of the series will have learned to turn first to the book’s closing pages where they will find a section titled “Monsters a field guide” which will introduce them, via Armstrong’s text and Daumarie’s art, to the monsters that Rowan, the 12-year-old royal monster hunter-elect, will encounter during the book’s action, this time nine in number.

Despite Rowan’s title as a monster hunter, she explains, “While I will kill monsters if necessary, my real job is finding ways for humans and monsters to live together by relocating the beasts and educating the people.” The recent and unexpected presence of a mother dragon and her young in the mountains of Rowan’s kingdom of Tamarel has caused other monsters to relocate into neighboring lands. Rowan, along with her twin brother and heir to the throne, Rhydd, is part of a diplomatic mission to nearby kingdoms to solicit their support in dealing with the dragon without having to kill it. Significantly, this trip will also take the place of a series of challenges that Rowan would have had to successfully complete in Tamarel in order to confirm her title as royal monster hunter. The group’s first stop is the kingdom of Roiva where matters quickly become complicated as the party learns that Roivan troops will trespass on Tamarel soil in order to kill the dragon and its young, all part of a plan by Roiva’s prime minister and the minister of defense to stage a coup.

Like the previous books, The Final Trial is filled with almost nonstop action as Rowan must deal with a series of monsters as well as a kidnapping. Themes from the earlier books, such as wildlife stewardship, animal welfare and evidence-based decision making, find their expression in this title as well. Readers need not have read the other three books in order to enjoy The Final Trial as it works well as a self-contained work.

Highly Recommended
Reviewer: 

Dave Jenkinson, CM’s editor, lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba.