Skylanders Universe: Spyro Versus the Mega Monsters

Sometimes, I just need to sit down, forget about the world, and read an old kids' book. A kids book, because if it's a well-written one, it will cheer me up or at least make me smile. An old one, because new kids books are cringey and often have the most unfunny jokes in existence.

And by kids book, I don't mean a picture book necessarily, I mean a middle grade kind of thing, like Land of Stories or Harry Potter. Something light and cheerful and fun.

This book is from 2013, and wow—the humor is soooo 2013. Strange to think that it was only 11 years ago, but the humor is so... Different. Relying on alliterations and tongue-twisters, metaphors and puns, and reversal of expectations really makes the style of humor stand out against modern kids books like, I dunno, Catwad (Okay, to be fair, I don't know a lot of ‘modern' middle grade books, so don't take me too seriously here; my sister reads Catwad), where the funniest bits are butt jokes, “trick bad words” (“what the fuuuuuungi?” [example, not a direct quote by the way]), and... Stuff.

Okay, point is, the humor is very different. Ah, and refreshing and nostalgic. I miss the cheesy alliterations of 2013 (“one of the Chompies sunk its long teeth into the Mabu's plump posterior. “) Alliterations aren't necessarily funny, but they add charm and a cheerful, lighthearted tone. Just what I needed today.

And reversal of expectations is one of the oldest methods for humour, but I like it. For example, near the end of the book, some scary librarian warriors arrive in a huge warship, and Hugo admits that they must have figured out that he has the 101 Ways to Get Rid of Sheep and Other Wooly Nuisances he stole years ago from the forbidden archives and never returned. Eon gets angry at poor Hugo and makes him return it to the librarian warriors. But, then it turns out the librarian warriors came to them for help, and had no idea the sheep book was ever missing. Again, this isn't automatically funny, but it made me smile because... I should have seen it coming, but I didn't.

Another repeated method of humor is joke set-up and, a paragraph later, joke pay-off, but I'm not gonna get into that, I've spent way too much time analyzing this old book for middle schoolers.

Okay, basically, this book's 2013 humor made me smile, maybe even chuckle, and feel immense nostalgia. And it was really short and just a nice relax-and-have-a-break-from-real-life book. Like, okay, it's a kids book, but when I'm stressed, I need to pretend I'm a kid again. And admittedly, at 16, I am still attached to the games, so reading this just... Made me happy for that reason. So, 5/5 for that.

But honestly, if I was gonna critique this book as if it wasn't written for middle schoolers in 2013, I would say it is really simple and pure commercial entertainment. Like, there's nothing deep or philosophical or intellectually stimulating in this book. The illustrations are really simple and don't add anything to the book. Except nostalgia—they smell like kool-aid in my mom's car when I was 9...Oops, getting off topic. Anyway, for the audience, I think the author did a great job. But if I was to critique it with the same standard I use for most books, I'd say it'd be a 3.5/5.

Therefore, I'll give this an overall 4/5, but my rating is biased. As you can clearly tell.