Charlie Blake is a troubled orphan living in an orphanage in London. 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 and the only good thing about the new school he attends is that he makes a friend, a girl called Alex. Charlie can't resist exploring and first he finds a stash of jewels around Jacob's house, then he finds that his sinister guardian is not coming by his wealth honestly.

Alex is unconvinced by Charlie's tales so he takes her out by night and shows her the woods where a homeless boy is living in a shack. Richmond, the resourceful boy, is irate to discover that a strange man is now hiding in the shack too. This man, Derkin, appears to age very quickly and gives the youngsters a jeweled talisman which enables them to find the alternate world of Arcadia. They fall through a hole to a world of 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 local forest dwellers, the Arcadians. The talisman is very important to these people and the young adventurers take on a new responsibility. Just as importantly, Charlie discovers that for weeks now he has not been sunk in depressing thoughts about his dead parents, he has been so busy thinking of his new friends and survival.

THE TALISMAN OF EL is a good lesson that friendship will help young people to survive better than loneliness. Some of the sequences are very exciting but others are not suitable for the nervous as they tend to horror. The woodlands of both worlds are well described and the peril feels very real at times. Alecia Stone has put a great deal of work into bringing her world to life and making us care about her young characters, who grow individually and as a team during the book.

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