Review: Talisman of El
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 05 22, 2013
This young adult book is clearly aimed at those who enjoy fantasy online gaming. The characters fall through a hole and emerge in an alternate world, full of monsters, forest dwelling people and magic treasure...Charlie Blake is a troubled orphan living in an orphanage in London, and finally he thinks he has a real chance when Jacob, a funeral director, takes him on and brings him to quiet Sussex. However Charlie's nightmares keep occurring. At the new school he attends he makes a friend, a girl called Alex. Charlie can't resist exploring and first he finds a stash of jewels in Jacob's house, then he finds that his sinister guardian is not coming by his wealth honestly but thieving from the dead.Alex is unconvinced by Charlie's tales so he takes her out by night and shows her the woods where a homeless boy, Richmond, is living in a shack. This resourceful boy is irate to discover that a strange man is now hiding in the shack too - Derkin appears to age very quickly and gives the youngsters a jewelled talisman which enables them to find the alternate world of Arcadia. They fall through a hole to find caverns, forests, lakes - and fearsome creatures like dinosaurs and werewolves.Fighting off predators and running for their lives, the adventurers then get tangled in traps set by the warlike local forest dwellers, the Arcadians. The talisman is very important to these people and the young adventurers take on a new responsibility as they cannot return home. Just as importantly, Charlie discovers that for weeks now he has not been sunk in his previous depressing thoughts about his dead parents, he has been so busy thinking of his new friends and survival.This story is a good lesson that friendship will help young people to survive better than loneliness. Some of the sequences were very exciting but others would not be suitable for the young or nervous as they tend to horror. The woodlands of both worlds are well described and the peril feels very real at times, but too much detail may be given about costumes and tribes, and I felt too much time was given to Derkin who does not go to Arcadia. Alecia Stone has put a great deal of work into bringing her worlds to life and making us care about her characters, who grow individually and as a team during the book.