Taken to the limits of their endurance the intrepid crew braves a subterranean world filled with dangers and bizarre wonders. When Thurid's warriors are defeated the crew frees the Grettig family from captivity and all embark together on a vast Underground Sea inhabited by incredible creatures. Weeks later, from evidence on three parchments found in a mysterious wooden box, the crew splits up. Eight of the crew hike into the rugged Eastern Mountains in search of a fabled Lost City, while the others take both Subterranean Exploration Submersibles into the far northern territories to investigate the Himminglaeva Settlement. After a grueling trek through the mountains both parties somehow reunite at the Caldera Vale where, following a cataclysmal event in which one of the SES is destroyed, all are airlifted from the Realm of Ancients and flown up to Tatoosh Island, south of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, to re-board the newly renovated schooner Heimdall. After a deadly encounter with Mortiken soldiers they set sail north, along the western Canadian coastline, in their relentless quest to find the First Tribe of Rognvald's to present them with the legendary Tempest Sword and a fortune in blood rubies.

In 1842, the pioneering French photographer Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey (1804–1892) set out eastward across the Mediterranean, daguerreotype equipment in tow. He spent the next three years documenting lands that were then largely unknown to the West, including Greece, Egypt, Turkey, Syria, and Lebanon, in some of the earliest surviving photographic images of these places. Monumental Journey, the first monograph in English on this brilliant yet enigmatic artist, explores the hundreds of daguerreotypes Girault made during his unprecedented trip, offering a rare, early look at sites and cities that have since been altered—sometimes irrevocably—by urban, environmental, and political change. Beautiful full-scale reproductions of Girault’s photographs, many published here for the first time, and incisive essays shed new light on the arc of his career and his groundbreaking contributions to the burgeoning fields of photography, archaeology, and architectural history. Monumental Journey presents an artist of astonishing innovation whose work occupies a singular space at the border of history and modernity, tradition and invention, endurance and evanescence. p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Verdana}