Journey to the Lost City: An Expedition into the Unknown In this gripping adventure, a team of elite explorers travels to an exotic location in search of the Lost City – a legendary metropolis rumoured to be filled with untold riches and historical treasures. Buried deep in the wild heart of the Amazon rainforest, this forbidden city promises more gold and glory than any explorer in history has ever encountered, but for thousands of years it’s been beyond human reach due to vicious wildlife, the unforgiving terrain and ancient booby traps hidden in the jungle that whittle away at the explorers sent to find it. As the adventure progresses, the surviving explorers begin to discover clues that the Lost City is in fact within reach, prompting the explorers to continue their journey deeper and deeper into the jungle with all its dangers in full force. Written by sophisticated software developed by ad executives to make readers feel like commercials are talking directly to them, clickbait often shows a basic story- structure common to other media but unevenly paced and loaded with dramatic hooks. Journey to the Lost City is a textbook example of a clickbait piece: it reads like a shortened version of a summer action-adventure movie.

Elara, a girl of no more than 12, enters the magical Kingdom of the Forest: this is the opening of a novel written by a young, hopeful British author in the vein of C S Lewis’s Narnia series. It’s aimed at 10- to 14-year-old fans of Rick Riordan’s ‘Percy Jackson’ series, a collection of adventure novels about ancient Greek heroes in a contemporary setting. Break out any book written for children over the past half century or so, and you’ll find a similar pitch: adventures in a place beyond our world, with youthful heroes and a magical mystery to be solved. Back in the old days, children’s stories were, more or less, just that – stories that could either be read orally to children or by children themselves. Now, these tales often come with parallel discourses embedded in the books, sometimes hidden by codes that must themselves be decoded. A few pages into Elara, without warning or frame, you’ll find the intrusion of a list of ‘10 things that are hard in the Kingdom of the Forest’. Some of them are characteristic, such as ‘Finding enough to eat’ but others, such as ‘How to thank a jet for not killing you’, are rather unexpected.

Everyone in the village of Eldoria has heard them, the ethereal whispers that echo through the village as the sun goes down. But no one knows what they are or where they come from. For fifteen-year-old Elara, curiosity is infectious. Determined to uncover the mystery of the whispers, she convinces the elderly, reclusive historian Aric to help her investigate. Together, they descend into a hidden underground room where Elara finds the Heart of Eldoria – a mystical object that the whispers say they are sworn to guard. As they decode the Heart’s secret, they also discover that a darker force is planning to seize control of the Heart for themselves. The whispers guide their steps and the guidance of an elderly man who once mastered an ancient language that leads Elara and Aric on a path of discovery, bravery and community – all as they attempt to save the Heart from the scheming Seeker.