A twelve-year-old English boy stumbles into an ancient world one autumn morning and then can’t find his way home.
The Vale resembles Anglo-Saxon Britain. Magic is real, and creatures straight from tales like Beowulf walk the earth.
Accidentally replacing the realm’s mystic champion, and claiming his magic sword Valesfang, Max teams up with a blacksmith, a hard-to-please dwarf and an amnesiac woodland spirit and sets out to rid the Vale of a dreadful menace – only to find the monster’s rampage is part of a much bigger plot.
Amid the growing clamour, Max realises his arrival has only made things easier for Gavin, a horrible boy from his own world who is the new, self-styled King of the Trolls.
Max is determined to set all wrongs right, but when he loses the magic sword, the challenge before him seems too great . . . and then there’s shadowy night elves, giant man-eating hedgehogs, shape-shifting warlocks and the Vale’s austere rulers to tackle as well.