J.C. Mills’ new environmental mystery/adventure novel is set in a lush valley in Nepal, where cryptozoologist Sir Jeffrey Parnell and his niece Lucy are on a quest to locate rare animals. They expect to find a yeti, but instead their brutish crew brings a mysterious creature back from a sacred, forbidden valley. Feathered, furred, reptilian, and even equipped with gills, this creature with glowing emerald eyes combines many features of the animal world and even sends Lucy, his caretaker, what seem to be telepathic messages. With the help of Evan, the son of Sir Jeffrey’s wildlife photographer, Lucy tries to return the holy creature to its habitat — despite the opposition of Sir Jeffrey’s thug-like assistant and egomaniacal patron.

With its conventional language, stiff characterization, and repeated use of creaking plot devices such as eavesdropping, Mills’ writing harks back to children’s mysteries of the 1960s. Her tone ranges from contemporary (with allusions to iPods and advanced science) to coy Victorian (“Mr Darby! If you don’t mind!” protests teenaged Lucy to a sexually aggressive young man).

And that’s too bad, because the setting and concepts behind this story are ones worth pursuing, and Mills clearly has a vision to share. Her human characters are a vehicle for her to display certain ideas about the animal world and humans’ relationship to it. “When these people dare to cross that final line,” instructs one guru-like character, “when they finally take that which is truly forbidden, holy to the kingdom of beasts – when the earth’s creatures realize that one of their most sacred has been imprisoned, a cry of sadness will go across the land….” With a considerable dash of anthropomorphizing, Mills invites her readers to consider the interdependence of all forms of life and to entertain the intriguing notion that animals, too, may have a sense of the sacred.