No one can resist Vesper Holly’s charms, even though she really doesn’t seem to have any.

In this installment, Vesper receives a summons from an unknown Frenchman, Alain de Rochefort, to visit the country of El Dorado for some unspecified, important business. De Rochefort even pays for their first-class passage—one-way, of course. Vesper convinces her incredibly ineffectual guardian Brinton Garrett to undertake this highly questionable venture, and off they go.

When they arrive, they discover that de Rochefort wishes to build an ambitious canal; this project would entail crossing large swaths of property owned by Vesper and displacing a local Indian tribe called the Chiricas. Vesper refuses to acquiesce to the project, befriends the Chiricas & their chief Acharro, and comes up with a plan to defeat the nefarious enterprise.

What follows is the standard formula for a Vesper Holly adventure: Vesper falls for some lame ploy, she and Brinnie are kidnapped, they manage to escape, only to fall for another lame ploy, and the cycle begins all over again.

At some point, it is revealed that Vesper’s archenemy Dr. Helvitius is behind all of the disreputable shenanigans.

In the end, Dr. Helvitius fails to prevent Vesper from ruining his schemes and escapes into the wilderness. As always, Vesper gets her way and she single-handedly transforms the Chiricas village into what she thinks a tribal village should be.

I still can’t believe that my ten year old self actually enjoyed these books…the characters are so exasperating! Vesper is such a gullible and reckless know-it-all, it is positively galling; yet everyone is enthralled with her. Brinton has got to be the worst, most irresponsible guardian ever appointed. And Dr. Helvitius is just an incompetent villain; he has numerous chances to permanently do away with his nemesis, but steadfastly refuses to do so—for no good reason other than the author needs his heroine for the next book in the series.

Two stars because they were enjoyable at one point in time, but they have not aged well. ( )

Lloyd Alexander is an author I have always enjoyed. This is one of his lesser known books and while it is not my favorite of his it is still quite good. His writing style is such that it definitely stands up to the test of time. ( )

I read this right after Hopkinson's The Chaos, and it'd be hard to find two more dissimilar young adult books. Where Hopkinson slams straight into the modern world of a young black teen world, Alexander heads back to 1870 Philadelphia -- and then Central America -- to tell a story that would have been at home in the days of Tom Swift and Nancy Drew. Vesper Holly is the plucky, brilliant, main character, who discovers she has inherited a volcano. The story is told by her Watson-ish narrating uncle, who is steadfast and brave, but annoyingly credulous and traditional. I don't think Alexander knew how to write anything less than enjoyable, but this is definitely one of his lesser efforts.

Recommended for Alexander completists, or to pass a few hours. ( )

Vesper and her guardian Brinnie head to the Central American country of El Dorado in response to a mysterious telegram. In El Dorado, they encounter earthquakes, volcanoes, Gatling guns, and their old nemesis Desmond Helvitius. Will Vesper and Brinnie be able to escape with their lives? Will they ever see Philadelphia again? ( )

It's very difficult not to read these in one sitting. We're off again with Vesper Holly, a female amalgam of Sherlock Holmes and Indiana Jones. They books are narrated by her guardian, Brinnie, very much in the style of Sherlock Holmes, and set in the 1870s.

This one gets extra points for throwing in quite a bit of Spanish (and these were originally published before you had all the internet translators, and mostly before the vast majority of Americans had internet access), and for making a number of allusions to authors and real people that would not be part of the usual 9-13 year old's knowledge set (Rousseau, Simon Bolivar, and Adam Smith among others).

Alexander throws around 'civilized' and 'savage' a bit too much for me. While he also sometimes points out that these are false terms, often he doesn't. They may be set in the 1870s, but it's not like they're realistic books, exactly. There's also a bit of the white savior air to some of the books, though typically the rescuing goes back and forth a number of times between Vesper and her allies, and Vesper's role is often as a sort of intermediary.

This one was great in that Vesper and Acharro (and the chief of an indigenous tribe) don't cut each other any slack, and they call each other on their mistakes. This also deals with land rights, and while not a mirror of the building of the Panama canal, there are sort of parallels. ( )