The second book in the Vesper Holly adventure series.

Page count: 164
Publication year: 1988
Format: Print
Publisher: Dell Publishing

The El Dorado Adventure starts a year after the previous book, the Illyrian Adventure. Vesper is now seventeen and just as bright and eager for adventure as before. She lives in Philadelphia with her guardians Professor Brinton Garrett and his wife Mary.

Vesper finds out that she owns a volcano and the surrounding lands in the small country of El Dorado, which was before a part of Spain. Then Alain de Rouchefort sends her a telegram that he needs to talk about that property immediately. He’s even paid for the journey. Soon, Vesper and Brinnie are on the way to Puerto Palmas. There, she comes fast friends with a people Brinne finds more than a little suspicious: a pair of identical twins, Smiler and Slider, who work on old steamship. Captain Blaizer O’Hare is an especially suspicious character and Brinnie is convinced that he’s a unscrupulous smuggler. Blaizer has also a talking parrot Adelita.

Blaizer tells Vesper and Brinnie that de Rouchefort is trying to build a canal which will drown out a local native tribe, the Chirians. The canal would go straight through Vesper’s lands. She, of course, will not allow that to happen.

This a short and entertaining adventure story filled with kidnappings, daring escapes, and running around in the jungle. However, most people turn out not to be what they seem to be at the first glance. It’s also full of what I would call endearing feminism where it’s enough to point out that sexism is silly, most people accept it, and they move on.

“What are you saying?”… “Are you asking men to do women’s work?”
“If they do it”, said Vesper,”it won’t be women’s work anymore. It will be everybody’s.”

If only that would work in the real world.

The story is written in first person. The storyteller is Brinnie who calls Vesper “dear girl” all the time and tries his best to protect her. He’s very much Watson to Vesper’s Holmes. Except that Vesper has actual human feelings.

This was nice, short, and funny, and exactly what I needed.