The Adventures of Horace, George, and Ingle: The Rise of the Black Knight

This is the story of four boys, three of them brothers, on their adventure to find out why a big fire occurred. The story begins with Ingle, Horace, and George going up to a tower and seeing a dark figure in the distance. They think nothing of it, until they find out a big fire has happened. Ingle gets chosen by his father, the king, to lead the investigation, along with another person named Roland. George and Horace join the other two boys when Ingle asks them for help.

The four boys go on an adventure to find out who, or what, caused this tragic event, and have to face their fears much more than they expected. The brothers try to find out whether the dark figure they saw and the fire are linked, and in the meantime meet people they’d never expect.

While the overall plot of the story is interesting, the excitement and story don’t start until about halfway into the book. The book introduces an interesting character, Rifflesley, but doesn’t really do anything with him, or include him in the mystery. The characters don’t have separate personalities, and the dialogue was too simple. The overall premise of this book felt old, and unoriginal. The story has a good ending, which made me interested in a second book, but I didn’t really care about what happened to the characters.

I think it’s a fun, short book to read when bored. I give it 3 out of 5 stars. The enjoyable age range for this would probably be 7-9. I think there were some interesting characters, but it seemed too bland for my taste; a few more plot twists, and a new, mysterious character or two really would’ve made this book better.