Darkmouth
A monstrously funny debut from the new star of middle-grade adventure.THEY’RE COMING!Legends (also known as terrifying, human-eating monsters) have invaded the town of Darkmouth and aim to conquer the world.But don’t panic! The last remaining Legend Hunter - Finn - will protect us.Finn: twelve-years-old, loves animals, not a natural fighter, but tries really, really hard, and we all know good intentions are the best weapons against a hungry Minotaur, right?On second thoughts, panic.PANIC NOW!
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First published in Great Britain by
HarperCollins Childrenâs Books in 2015
Published in this edition 2017
HarperCollins Childrenâs Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,
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Text copyright © Shane Hegarty 2015
Illustrations copyright © James de la Rue 2015
Shane Hegarty asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.
James de la Rue asserts the moral right to be identified as the illustrator of the work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007545612
Ebook Edition © 2017 ISBN: 9780007545780
Version: 2017-02-03
For Maeve, who made the adventure possible.
Contents
From A Concise Guide to the Legend Hunter World, Vol. 2 â¦
From A Concise Guide to the Legend Hunter World, Vol. 3 â¦
From A Concise Guide to the Legend Hunter World, Vol. 5 â¦
From A Concise Guide to the Legend Hunter World, Vol. 6 â¦
The town of Darkmouth appears on few maps because very few people want to find it. When it is marked on one, its location is always wrong. Itâll be a bit north of where itâs supposed to be, or a bit south. A little left or a little right. A bit off.
Always.
Which means that visitors to Darkmouth invariably arrive having taken a wrong turn, soon convinced theyâll reach only a dead end. They drive through a canopy of trees, whose branches reach from either side to clasp ever tighter overhead, becoming thicker with every mile until the dappled light is choked off and the road is dark even on the brightest of days. Then, just as the wood is almost scraping the paint from their car, and it seems that the road itself is going to be suffocated, the visitors travel through a short tunnel and emerge on to a roundabout filled with blossoming flowers and featuring a sign that reads:
The next line has been updated by hand a couple of times:
On a wall lining the road there is large striking graffiti. It says only this:
Except the last S forms a serpent, with mouth wide and teeth jagged. Visitors peer at it and wonder, Is that a � Could it be a �
Yes, that snake really is swallowing a child.
The travellers â by now a bit desperate in their search â have finally reached Darkmouth. Their next thought is this: Letâs get out of here.
So they go right round the roundabout and head back the way they came. Which is a shame, because if they were to stay they would realise that Darkmouth is actually quite a nice place. It has a colourful little ice-cream shop on the harbour, benches dotted along the strand, picnic tables and fun climbing frames for the kids.
And no one has been eaten by a monster for some time.
In fact, they arenât really monsters at all. They might look monstrous, and the locals might refer to them as monsters, but, strictly speaking, they are Legends. Myths. Fables. They once shared the Earth with humans, only to grow envious, then violent, so that a war raged through the worldâs Blighted Villages for centuries.
Now Darkmouth is the last of these Blighted Villages. And Legends show up only occasionally.
This morning just happens to be one of those occasions.
Thinking back on it all later, Finn identified that morning as the time when things began to go badly wrong.
Thinking on it a little bit more, he realised he could identify just about any morning of his first twelve years as when things began to go wrong. At the time, though, he wasnât doing much thinking. Instead, he was running. As hard as he could. In a clanking armoured suit and heavy helmet. In the rain. Away from a Minotaur.
