The Illyrian Adventure by Lloyd Alexander, 1986.

This is the first book in the Vesper Holly series. Vesper Holly is like a female Young Indiana Jones.

The story begins in 1872, when Professor Brinton Garrett and his wife, Mary, receive a letter saying that Professor Garrett’s colleague, Dr. Holly, has died overseas. Dr. Holly named Professor Garrett as executor of his will, gave him the rights to organize his person papers for publication, and made him the guardian of his 16-year-old daughter, Vesper. When Professor Garrett and his wife arrive at Dr. Holly’s country estate in Pennsylvania to meet Vesper and take charge, they at first expect that they will have to comfort a timid and grieving orphan. However, Vesper is anything but timid and seems to have gotten over whatever grief she was feeling and has quickly taken charge of the situation. She welcomes the professor and his wife, calling them Uncle Brinnie and Aunt Mary, and she quickly persuades them that, rather than her coming to live with them, it would be better for them to take up residence at the Holly estate, where there is plenty of room and Uncle Brinnie would have full access to her late father’s library and papers. At first, they’re reluctant to leave their own home, but Vesper Holly is practically a force of nature and very difficult to resist.

Vesper is intelligent and multi-talented, with interests in everything from science to women’s rights. (In some ways, she seems kind of like Mary Sue – impossibly talented and skilled at everything, with her main flaws seeming to be that she is difficult for everyone else to keep up with.) Uncle Brinnie quickly realizes that she is a daunting girl to have as his ward, and rather than he and his wife taking charge of her, Vesper has efficiently taken charge of them.

Soon after Professor Garrett and Mary settle in at the Holly estate, Vesper asks Uncle Brinnie if he’s read a piece of classic literature called the Illyriad and if he knows anything about Illyria. Professor Garrett has read this less-known classic piece, and while he’s never been to Illyria, he knows that it’s an incredibly unstable place. While the Illyriad is thought to be mostly legend, Vesper says that her father believed that there was more truth to it than most people know. He believed that the magical army described in the story may actually have been an army of clockwork automatons. Professor Garrett remembers Dr. Holly saying something like that before, but no one in the academic community took the theory seriously, and Professor Garrett says that he thought Dr. Holly had abandoned the idea. Vesper reveals that her father was still working on the theory and that, shortly before his death, he wrote to her, saying that he found something that seemed to support his ideas. Unfortunately, he died before revealing what he found. Vesper says that she wants Uncle Brinnie to take her on an expedition to Illyria so that she can finish her father’s work. Once again, Professor Garrett balks at the idea because of the dangerous political situation in the region, but also once again, Vesper’s powers of persuasion win.

Professor Garrett is sure that they won’t be granted permission to enter the country much less move around Illyria because of the unrest there, but to his astonishment, Vesper gets them permission to do both by writing to the king of Illyria himself. Although the king never met Vesper’s father, he has read Dr. Holly’s research and is fascinated by his theories, which is why he also grants Vesper a personal audience. Before their meeting with the king, Vesper and Professor Garrett are caught up in a riot while touring the city, and someone tries to stab Vesper! Although it could have been an accident during the riot, Vesper is sure that someone deliberately tried to kill her, and she tells the king about it at their meeting. The king is troubled by the news and admits that he had assigned someone to follow Vesper and Professor Garrett to protect them. It’s a failure on the part of his guard that they were attacked anyway.

The king’s vizier immediately says that they have to crack down harder on the native Illyrians, bringing up the cultural and political struggle that has made this country so dangerous. (Don’t worry too much about understanding it. This isn’t a real life historical situation with real groups of people.) Vesper boldly says that it doesn’t make sense to her that one half of the country crack down on the other half of the country, and she advocates for more respect for the native Illyrians and their wishes. The vizier is scandalized at a girl speaking up to the king like that, and the king tells Vesper that the situation isn’t that simple. The king has been trying to modernize and improve the infrastructure of the country with projects like building schools and railroads lines, but each of these projects has been ruthlessly sabotaged, apparently by the native Illyrians. The vizier has suggested hiring outside sources from other countries to complete the projects, but the king still thinks it’s important to keep the projects within the country. Hiring outsiders would be costly and would make Illyria dependent on outsiders. (Right about at this point, I was sure that I fully understood who the real villain of this story was and who was really responsible for the sabotage, and it wasn’t the native Illyrians. However, there is one more important character yet to be introduced.)

The king grants Vesper and Professor Garrett the ability to travel to the village Vesper wants to visit to pick up the trail of her father’s studies, but before they leave the palace, the king introduces them to anther visiting scholar, Dr. Desmond Helvitius. Dr. Helvitius is there to catalog the palace archives and conduct research for a book about the early history of Illyria. Dr. Helvitius says that, based on his studies, he believes that the army from the Illyriad Dr. Holly was researching never existed and was purely imaginary and says that the palace archives, which are thorough and complete, prove it. However, Vesper insists on seeing the archives herself, and she quickly notices that there is a gap in the records. Our heroes ponder what is missing and why Dr. Helvitius doesn’t want anyone to know that anything is missing.

As Vesper and Uncle Brinnie continue in pursuit of Dr. Holly’s theory, there are further attempts on their lives.

The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies).

My Reaction and Spoilers

Although there are themes of history and archaeology in the Vesper Holly stories, I think it’s important to point out that all of the history and archaeology in the stories is fake. The locations they visit are fictional. The series takes place in the Victorian era, but this is not really a historical fiction series because they mostly focus on the history of places that don’t exist. The Indiana Jones and Young Indiana Jones franchise based their adventures on real places, people, artifacts, and legends that exist outside of the franchise, but that’s not the case with Vesper Holly. Really, the Vesper Holly series is just an adventure series. The locations and circumstances only exist to create the opportunities for adventure. That’s fine and fun, as long as readers understand that’s the case.

The name of Illyria comes from an ancient name for a region in the Balkans where people spoke a language that was called Illyrian, but Illyria didn’t exist as a country in the 1870s. People stopped referring to Illyria in the sense of a nation after the Ottomans invaded the region in the 15th century, and that was after it had already been under both Roman and Byzantine control. The term “Illyria” sometimes emerged after that in a cultural sense. The Illyriad doesn’t exist and seems to be based on the real piece of classical literature, the Iliad. I couldn’t find any references to a King Vartan, but there is a St. Vartan or Vardan, who was an Armenian military leader and martyr, who died in 451 AD. The political and social tensions in the story are between the ethnic Illyrians and the Zentans. The captial city of this fictional Illyria is Zenta, and I think it is based on the city now called Senta in modern day Serbia, which was the site of a battle in 1697, where the Ottomans were defeated and lost control of the region. So, my overall impression of the time period and location of the story is that it seems to take place in a sort of alternate reality of the Victorian world, semi-based on real places and historical concepts from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean, especially the Balkans, but not adhering strictly to real history so the author could set up the adventure creatively.

The Illyrian characters in the book use words like “dragoman” (a term for a guide and interpreter, usually used in the Near East, particularly in areas with Arabic, Turkish, or Persian influence) and “effendi“, which is an honorific for a man of high status in eastern Mediterranean countries. It’s plausible that these terms would be used in the Balkans in the 19th century, but this isn’t really my area of expertise, so I can’t say how common that would have been.

The adventure in the story is good, and it has an element of mystery that adds an interesting twist to the ending. At the beginning of the story, Vesper and Professor Garrett explain that Dr. Holly had a theory about the historical events behind a legend described in a piece of classical literature. His theory was that this special army described in literature was actually some kind of mechanical or clockwork army, an army composed of something man-made rather than real humans. Professor Garrett and his colleagues never took Dr. Holly’s theory seriously because it does sound rather unbelievable, too technologically advanced for the time when the historical events took place. However, Vesper believes in her father and his theories, and now that he is dead, she wants to investigate and find the proof that her father wanted for the sake of his memory. If they had really found an amazing clockwork army, it would have been an incredible adventure, but I was pleased that what they actually found is a more plausible explanation that would have fit the time period. It turns out that Dr. Holly was half right; the legendary army was not composed of real people, but there is another kind of army that nobody considers until Vesper actually finds it. Legends tend to magnify things out of their original proportions. This particular legend not only exaggerated the army’s capabilities but also its size.

I liked the twists to the story, but Vesper herself got on my nerves a bit. Vesper only really makes sense if you look at her as being the kind of heroine of tall tales. She is overly perfect with no noticeable flaws. She rarely gets frightened or upset at anything, from the death of her own father to being threatened with death herself. She cheerfully pulls her new guardian into dangerous situations, and her guardian can’t even really get angry with her for doing it. Vesper is incredibly persuasive, whether it’s dealing with her guardian or a foreign king, and her guardian is adoring of her and constantly admires her intelligence and abilities. Like Sherlock Holmes with Watson, Uncle Brinnie is always one step behind both Vesper and the readers in figuring things out. Characters who are overly perfect can be a little grating, partly because there are times when they drag their friends into dangerous situations but, somehow, it’s never their fault because they’re perfect. In fiction, this kind of confidence and seeming perfection are strengths, but in real life, over-confidence is a sign of incompetence and lack of awareness. People who charge directly into dangerous situations in real life are just kind of clueless about the dangers they’re plunging into. The books in this series are just meant as fun adventure stories, not serious or true-to-life in either characterization or historical background, so Vesper’s amazing qualities, whether it’s her ability to eat all kinds of strange foods or learn new languages in barely any time at all or to compete intellectually with professional academics who are decades older than she is, fits with the story type. Vesper isn’t mean to be a real person so much as the ultimate teenage adventurer.

Kids can enjoy this teenage heroine who is on top of every situation, can rush into danger without any sense of fear, and gets her way with little argument from anyone. However, I think I would enjoy Vesper more if she did have a few more flaws and limitations. I would have liked it if Vesper had a definite fear of something, like Indiana Jones’s fear of snakes. It could be played for comedy, like in the Indiana Jones movies. I also would have liked it if Professor Garrett could have appeared more sharp than he did and provide more useful knowledge so that Vesper had to depend a little more on him professionally during their expedition. I felt like the story dumbed down the professor a bit so Vesper could appear more brilliant, and I don’t like it when characters are made to look stupid so another character can look more intelligent by comparison.

Vesper’s relationship with her deceased father is never really explained or developed, either. When we first meet her, she is well over being sad about his death and ready to embark on an adventure in his name. I would have liked it if she and her Uncle Brinnie had a heart-to-heart talk about her feelings during their travels. Dr. Holly seems to have spent a significant amount of time away from home or involved in his research work. Vesper is a motherless only child who does not seem to attend a regular school or have friends her own age. I would expect that this unconventional life would have an effect on her development and that she would have feelings about it. I would have liked her to explain more to Brinnie that her eclectic range of knowledge and expertise with languages comes from having been dragged around the world with her father from a young age, from spending time around her father’s professional colleagues and witnessing their discussions with each other, and from becoming an active research assistant to her father because their family consisted of only the two of them, and sharing his interests was a way for them to bond. I picture Dr. Holly reading pieces of classical literature to Vesper as bedtime stories because he would have little or no interest in the typical nursery rhymes or picture books.

If Vesper had more knowledge of ancient history and literature than things typical children know and like, that could also show character quirks and development. It might even be a flaw in the sense that Vesper knows more about how to speak to and relate to professional academics than girls her own age at a time when female academics were often not taken seriously. Vesper occupies an odd position in life but without the obvious awkwardness that would cause in real life. Her confidence and ability to stride forward in situations that would cause anyone else hesitation might actually come from the knowledge that, if she allowed anyone else time to think about what she’s barging into, she would never be able to accomplish what she wants to accomplish because other people wouldn’t accept it. She could be feeling more of the awkwardness of her position more than she lets on, and some discussion of her need to hide her own feelings, act more confident than she feels, or compensate for other people’s feelings about her would add depth to her character. It’s possible that later books in the series develop other sides of her personality and history more, but I would have liked more of that in this book.