While I love Enid Blyton adventure books, the ones set in faraway, exotic countries tend to be a bit too farfetched for me to suspend my disbelief. This one, while farfetched, is not one of the most farfetched, so I was fine with it.

The children visit Baronia, invited by prince Paul's parents. Due to a heatwave they are sent to a summer residence in the mountains and they get in a adventure involving a band of robbers and a secret, inaccessible forest.

So far, the best books in this series are the first ones, particularly the first (The Secret Island), which is a classic, but young readers will enjoy the continuing adventures of this group of children. ( )

exiciting

Opening Sentence: ‘…Three excited boys stood on a station platform, waiting for a train to come in.…’

Jack, Mike, Peggy and Nora have been invited by their friend, PrincePaul, to accompany him to his country – the make-believe kingdom of Baronia, a remote and beautiful mountainous country. They are to stay in the Royal palace for the summer holidays. The King’s main guards, Ranni and Pilescu, are given the task of keeping the five children amused and safe. This is quite easy what with swimming pools, extensive gardens and plane trips. Then the temperatures soar, and the palace is stifling hot. The solution? Up in Killimooin mountains is another castle, built by the King the year before, but empty apart from the caretakers. It will be cooler up in the mountains, so it’s decided to travel there for the rest of the holidays.

The Castle is right next to ‘The Secret Forest’ which is contained with a valley inside an impassable range of mountains, so steep that no man, or goat, has ever got inside. There are no passes between the mountains, no way through at all, and no human has ever set foot inside it. Or have they?

Look I am a huge fan of Enid Blyton’s adventure and mystery books – I can read them over and over again and never be bored. This is as good as I remember and was a wonderful few hours of immersing myself in an innocent and fun adventure. ( )

The first Enid Blyton book I read, borrowed from a friend, and still one of her best. Set in a fictional East European country, a kind or rural Ruritania that is something like a mixture of Poland and Romania, it has mystery, action, and the obligatory undergound journeys. ( )

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