Valley of the Vikings

The title of this new book by Liz Kessler, author of the Emily Windsnap series, may fool some readers into thinking that this is a story centred around a Viking adventure of some sort. It is in fact, a stand-alone Emily Windsnap story that features the determination, bravery and quick thinking of Emily and her friends as they try, against powerful forces, to save the world from needless destruction.

The adventure starts off as a holiday in a magical yet inaccessible mist-covered island in the middle of the sea. Emily decides to take her new possession found on the rocks – a bangle with a blue crystal. Quickly, it piques everyone’s interest. Could it be a piece of jewellery that was part of a huge Viking stash lost in a storm a thousand years before? Being half human and half mermaid means Emily and her friends can easily find out more by exploring the seafloor for a shipwreck and its treasure. And so an innocent quest starts, but it soon turns into something more sinister because the sea bed isn’t a flat and friendly place to explore after all – it contains deep trenches, caves and tunnels which prove to be unstable. With the crystal glowing on her bangle, Emily encourages her friends to follow their noses through the thick black sea, until they stumble upon an unexpected thousand-year-old mystery.

The mystery reveals a hidden threat to the world, and so the gang must get back through the falling rocks, the sinking trenches and back to the island and work out exactly how to solve the problem. This is a fun and engaging book for any reader who likes adventure with fantasy, and many will appreciate the hidden rhetoric of fighting to protect our planet’s resources to maintain the balance of nature, despite the actions of a few.