Review: Lego Nexo Knights “The Book of Monsters”

Spoilers Below

The first part of “The Book of Monsters” introduced us to the main characters via a television news program. In the Kingdom of Knighton, a group of five young knights are about to graduate from battle school. They are: Clay Moorington, Lance Richmond, Aaron Fox, Axl, and Macy Halbert, the kingdom’s princess. While the graduation ceremony seems to be a normal routine, it is a little weird since there has been peace in the kingdom for the past 100 years. As a result, the knights spend more time goofing off then actually being knights.

In the middle of the ceremony, a huge monster randomly appears. Clay tries to fight the monster but isn’t very successful. Just when everyone is about to freak out, they find that the monster was created by the kingdom’s resident wizard, Merlock. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief and the ceremony continues without interruption.

After the ceremony has ended, the court jester, Jestro, takes the stage. But his act fails miserably. Upset that everyone is laughing at him, Jestro hides in Merlock’s chamber. There he finds an evil book that convinces him to release powerful monsters. Clay, who has always been a friend to Jestro, searches for the jester to make him feel better. Unfortunately, he ends up attacked by the monsters summoned from the book. Luckily, Merlock arrives in the nick of time. He magically throws Clay out of the room, seals it shut, and creates an explosion that destroys everything. Or so it seems.

The monsters were killed but Jestro and the book were only thrown out of the kingdom. They spend most of the episode traveling around the forest, growing more powerful. Eventually, they come upon another evil book. The book turns Jestro fully evil and The Book of Monsters consumes it to make him more powerful as well. With this new power, they decide to attack the kingdom again.

Meanwhile, the knights argue about how they should prepare for the coming monsters. Clay believes they should train more while Axl and Aaron just want to play video games.

When the monsters finally attack, the knights are completely unprepared. None of their weapons do anything to hurt any of the monsters. Of course, this is when Merlock appears inside the computer. Ava, a freshman at the academy, has been working on the power problems the kingdom has been having since Merlock disappeared. She finds out that Merlock was absorbed into the computer, where he now resides as a hologram. Conveniently, Merlock appears just in time to power up the knights’ weapons, which allows them to defeat the monsters and send Jestro and the book running for the hills.

Knowing that this was a Lego series, I was disappointed in the lack of Lego bricks. All of the characters are mini-figs but everything else in the land is solid. The monsters don’t break apart into bricks when they are defeated, they just turn into smoke. The best part of the Lego stuff is the brick breaking. It’s a little boring without it. In addition, the story wasn’t very original. It felt like a mixture between the old Voltron Force from the 80s series, Voltron, mixed with some Power Ranger power-ups tossed into a medieval setting. There are some really great Lego television series out there. This just isn’t one of them.