Continuing the CSFF Tour of Venom and Song, the latest book by the dynamic duo of Wayne Thomas Batson and Christopher Hopper, one would expect a review of the book, right?

If I had been able to rip it away from my 10 year old long enough to finish it, I would review it.

I guess I can’t blame him – he had a Barnes and Noble gift card from his birthday, so really I’m trying to steal his book. But…he knew I had a deadline!

Instead, I am going to attempt a difficult task: interpret a 10 year old boy’s thoughts of, “Cool! Awesome!” into a coherent review.

Remember that this is book two, following last year’s Curse of the Spider King (see the tour here, there, and here too). We read that together as a family out loud over a couple months at bedtime. The timing worked out that we finished Curse right before Venom came out, so he launched right into it. Both boys enjoyed the action, characters, and suspense of the first book. (A favorite line was when an Elf was asked if she knew what the other Elves were up to due to telepathy. The answer: “A cell phone.”)


All boy



I pressed him for more. He like the action, the characters, and the suspense (had to define “suspense” for him). His favorite character was the teenage elven lord Jett, due to his power of super-strength and his past history of being a star football player. He didn’t care for Kat or Kiri Lee, two other lords, because they didn’t have “cool powers” (telepathy and air-walking). I wondered if it was the fact they were girls, but he didn’t include Autumn, who has super speed, so the power thing must be it.

I also asked him about a theme. As a 10 year old boy, his response was, “Uhhhhhhh.” Finally, he said he saw the importance of teamwork from the book. I don’t think I’d do any better as a 10 year old, so I’ll take it!

So, if you want to know what a typical 10 year old boy thinks of Venom and Song, it is “cool.”

Nuff said!

Oh, and for stuffy grown-up opinions 😉 you can check out Becky Miller’s blog, where she keeps a tab on all posts here.
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