This is the conclusion to Helen Dunmore's Ingo quartet. Readers who have read the first 3 in the series will not want to stop. They will need this book to find out how the saga is brought to an end. Is it worth the wait? An emphatic yes is the answer!

A synopsis would read something like this:'Sapphire, Conor and their Mer friends Faro and Elvira are ready to make the Crossing of Ingo - a long and dangerous journey that only the strongest young Mer are called upon to make. No human being has ever attempted this thrilling voyage to the bottom of the world. Ervys, his followers and new recruits, the sharks, are determined that Sapphire and Conor must be stopped -- dead or alive!' That pretty much sums up the action.

Helen Dunmore tells an exciting story full of adventure and action. As I read I became quite tense; how on earth ( or under the sea) were the quartet of main characters going to get through the barriers, both physical and emotional, that were increasingly strewn across their path. As you might expect, it all comes to a satisfactory ( if not completely happy) end. The climax is particularly well done and bitter sweet.

However this is not just worth reading because it is an exciting story, well told. It is the kind of story that, if I had read it at eleven, would have resonated and stayed with me as I grew older. It is, for me, a skilfully wrought metaphor about the process of growing up and leaving one's parents behind ; the uncertainties and potentialities of finding our own way in life and becoming an adult, the gradual embracing of who we are and who we could be. The process can be painful and tricky; the barriers both physical and emotional. 'The Crossing Of Ingo' explores this theme as well as the more obvious one about conservation and the way humans are fouling the oceans with their selfishness. Helen Dunmore's skill in combing the weave of the plot with the weft of the underlying themes is potent. Highly recommended. You need the whole set in the school library now!

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