Hall of the Golden Crocodiles

The second book in The Aten Sequence, Hall of the Golden Crocodiles, sees Aten getting ever more desperate to get his hands on enough gold to process into fuel. His fuel reserves are running very low and the thought of being stuck forever on this dusty excuse of a planet is bringing him out in a cold sweat. So he needs to up the stakes and sends his teenage travelling companion Luke and his faithful friend Neferptah back to the royal palace of Malkata to join the royal training school of the Kap to get information for him. But will the boys be able to get him the information he needs? Will they even be able to get close enough to the Princess Merytamen again in order to use her to lead them to Karnak Temple? As usual, Aten’s plans rapidly unravel, leading to a thrilling chase in the night and through the vast underground vaults beneath Karnak in pursuit of his goal. Suitable for young adults and fantasy readers of all ages ‘Hall of the Golden Crocodiles’ is the second book of the Aten Sequence that sees the return of Aten and his travelling companions from ‘Pharaoh’s Gold’ as they try to find a way off Earth and back to their travels around the Universe.

Aten is getting desperate. He is rapidly running out of fuel and his hopes of joining his Uncle Lucie and conquering the Universe are beginning to evaporate. Arousing the suspicions of the mighty High Priest Neferhotep has only made his task of getting into the treasure vaults of the Temple of Karnak even more difficult. It doesn’t help that his travelling companions, the irrepressible teenager Luke, the timid half man/half dog Druitt, the volatile Galasian Tuy and the cheeky computer Zoom keep letting him down. Or that his secret project, the royal prince that likes to call himself Akhenaten, is not proving to be as easy to control as he had once thought. So he comes up with a plan to place Luke and his faithful friend Neferptah into the Kap, a training school for Egypt’s young royal princes and nobility, in the hope that the boys will come across information that will help Aten find a way into the temple vaults and get him the gold he needs. But will this plan work after all his others have failed? Or will relying on two teenage boys and a young princess to get him where he needs to be just lead to further complications? Suitable for young adults and fantasy readers of all ages ‘Hall of the Golden Crocodiles’ is the second book of the Aten Sequence that sees Aten finally find his way into the vaults of Karnak Temple. But although he now so close to his goal, events rapidly spiral out of control placing his travelling companions and the young Egyptians in terrible danger. And just when he thinks that things cannot get any worse, he is confronted with someone from his past. Someone who is possibly the last person in the Universe that Aten wanted, or even expected, to have to deal with. So will Aten be able to get his gold, make his fuel and blast off to join his Uncle Lucie? Follow his adventures in ‘Hall of the Golden Crocodiles’ and find out what the fates have in store for our hapless hero, his ill-assorted space crew and the young royal Egyptians that he has drawn into his web.

Cynthia Marsh was born in Australia, but was brought up in the United Kingdom. She discovered her love of books at an early age, with childhood favourites such as ‘Black Beauty’ and the Narnia books being read many times. She loved writing stories as a child and teenager, but the excitement of going to college in London and then working in the capital put her writing dreams on hold for many years. Cynthia is a great traveller and took time out in 2007 to spend seven months travelling solo in Australia and New Zealand. Egypt and Greece are also countries that she enjoys exploring. When she returned she qualified as a Clinical Hypnotherapist and also developed her skills as a content writer and blogger. She also started to write fiction again and it was her interest in exotic destinations, the paranormal and the unseen things that are lurking just below the edge of our consciousness that inspired her to write her first collection of spooky tales and put them together in a compilation of short stories called 'Ghosts and Other Really Big Surprises'. But it was her love of Ancient Egypt and the magical time that she has spent exploring temples and tombs of this ancient civilisation that inspired the first book in her YA fantasy fiction series ‘The Aten Sequence’. ‘Pharaoh’s Gold’ follows the adventures of Aten, an immortal space being stuck on Earth who needs to get his hands on large quantities of gold to make the fuel he needs to escape the planet. But Aten is not quite as good as he thinks he is, and seriously underestimates the Egyptians who will do anything to protect the sacred gold they have stored in the Temple of Karnak. The second book in the series ‘Hall of the Golden Crocodiles’ continues his adventures, but will his mission succeed before he runs out of fuel and is stuck forever?