Once Upon A Tim (Book 3)

The Sea of Terror by Stuart Gibbs
My rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

The Sea of Terror by Stuart Gibbs is an entertaining fantasy adventure story for middle grade readers.

My Overview

There’s never a lull in the Kingdom of Merryland, so there’s never any rest for Tim. As a member of the Knight Brigade, he continually faces dangerous situations and creatures to protect the kingdom. Tim, along with his friend Belinda, are still knights-in-training but they face great danger all the same This time, the queen’s golden fleece along with the magical amulet of Merryland are missing!

Recently, the king and queen of the Kingdom of Dinkum, visited the Kingdom of Merryland. During that visit, the queens wore similar golden fleeces and they accidentally got swapped. Unfortunately, the queen of Merryland had been keeping the magical amulet in the pocket of her Golden Fleece 😣. So, the Knight Brigade must visit the Kingdom of Dinkum to retrieve the golden fleece and the amulet. Just like that, Tim and Belinda are back in a new quest, along with the Knight Brigade. The trouble, is that the only way there is through the Sea of Terror 😯. As it turns out, their journey is even more dangerous than Tim had feared. Worse, a mysterious black ship seems to be following them, and the Kingdom of Dinkum isn’t keen on returning the magical amulet. As usual Sir Vyval, the leader of the Knight Brigade, is afraid and unable to come up with any smart plans. So once again, Tim must put his fears aside and lead. This time, it’s unclear how he and his friends will survive the perilous journey, because the story ends with a cliffhanger.

This is such a funny and entertaining story! I especially like the cliffhanger ending, because it’s a nice twist. It also encourages young readers to continue on to the next book 😁. As in the previous books, there are a lot of vocabulary words (IQ Boosters) sprinkled throughout the story. For each IQ Booster word, a definition is given, along with a sample (and silly) sentence to explain how to use the word. All of that, in addition to the humor and illustrations, make this an engaging story from beginning to end.

My Recommendation

I highly recommend this book to all who enjoy humorous fantasy stories. The engaging storyline and illustrations, along with the short chapters, make it perfect as a read aloud. This book reads fine as a standalone, but I recommend reading the books in this series in order.

The other books I’ve enjoyed in this series:

Have you read this or any other books by this author?