Mission Survival 1: Gold of the Gods

From the Publisher
Lost in the jungle! Bruno is on a trip to Colombia in his school holidays. His anthropologist uncle has taken him along on a visit to Don Rafael de Castillo, a descendent of a great explorer who is claimed to have discovered a lost City of Gold. But the secret of the city died with the explorer – until now. . . . A fast-paced, new adventure full of real survival details and tips.

Children’s Literature
The first of survivalist Bear Grylls’s new ‘Mission Survival’ series centers on Beck Granger trying to save his Uncle Al and Rafael de Castillo, mayor of Cartagena, Colombia. Mayor de Castillo has just announced plans to find El Ciudad Perdido d’El Dorado, the Lost City of gold, which was originally made known to Western Civilization by the mayor’s ancestor, Conquistador Gonzalo de Castillo. The city plays an important role in the religion of the Kogi, a native Indian tribe. The citizens of Cartagena are having their final night of Easter celebration with a street festival and, when the mayor and Uncle Al go to light the fireworks, they are abducted. The sinister looking Chief of Police, Jefe Ramirez, takes Beck and the mayor’s twin children-Marcos and Christina-back to the de Castillo estate and orders them to stay there. The twin’s mother is in Europe on a business trip. Beck doesn’t feel he can’t sit around waiting to hear from the kidnappers, so he and the twins figure out where the map to the Lost City was hidden and head out to find the city. Along the way they have many adventures, meet the telepathic Kogis, and Beck teaches Marcos and Christina survival skills. In the end, Beck rescues Uncle Al and Mayor de Castillo from the grasp of the evil Jefe Ramirez and returns the Kogi’s sacred religious artifact. The book is a fun adventure yarn, with not much plot and very little in the way of character depth. For instance, Beck’s parents are missing and presumed dead, but we get very little of Beck’s feelings about this. Reviewer: Sarah Maury Swan