The time-travelling cows visit the year 878 where the Vikings are under attack from some mysterious sea-monsters…

Steve Cole’s Cows In Action series (CIA) has become incredibly popular over the past few years, with the 12th book maintaining the series’ blend of action, adventure, and puns. As well as providing a good read for the youngsters at which it’s aimed, there are enough references for adults to have a wry smile if they’re reading them to or with their children.

Just to explain: the titular Cows in Action are time-travelling cattle commandos, with special cows called Emmsy-Squares leading the fight against the Fed-Up Bull Institute, evil cattle from the future who want to take over the world. As they do.

But what do the target audience think? Over to Sophie Simpson, aged 9 (and there are a few spoilers ahead)

I read lots of CIA books and I enjoy them a lot: they are some of my favourites. The stories are all very good and always very clever. The characters are interesting, and I especially like Little Bo.

The Viking Emoo-gency is one of my favourites because all of the characters (the important ones like Pat, Bo and Professor Mc Moo) are all in different scenes, in different dangers, with different other characters, like Gruntbag and his wimpy Vikings, Mookow, and Dr Taurus Gaur. The enemies are all very interesting, and I liked what Dr Gaur did to make Bull-kings and Mook’s interesting cloud.

On the subject of enemies, I found the idea of Moo-goo very interesting. The idea of making moo-tants out of cow and any other animal was very cool. But then again, it would be very miserable to be slaves. Dr Gaur is stark raving mad, but also, actually, quite clever. He turned Vikings into Bull-kings, so he is very clever at genetic science. Also, Mookow and the rest of the FBI were very inventive and clever with the cloud of metal eating rain.

McMoo, Pat and Bo were also clever, but the actual hero of the story was McMoo. He modified Mookow’s cloud to melt any metal, including 26th Century metal. Pat and Alfred the Great were clever too: when they realised Nessie Barmer’s deadly buns shocked Arlik the Mighty back to human, they gave every Bull-king a black bun, and kept some for the battle ahead…

All in all, it was a brilliant, fantastic and fun book. I really enjoyed it. A clever plot, brilliant characters and funny humour. I would definitely recommend reading it.  9/10

Sophie Simpson

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