The Vale

"The Vale is the story of thirteen-year-old Bran Joseph Lee, who has spent half his life building the eponymous Vale, an immersive, AI-generated, virtual-reality environment using technology created by his inventor parents. It's a lush fantasy world complete with a Blue Forest, a Castle, and adventures with his mushroom-obsessed Elf named Gnomly. For Bran, it's a much better place to spend his days compared to his real life, where his parents suffer through the failed launches of one invention after another. Bran wants nothing more than to see his Elves come fully to life, a hope that seems on the brink of reality when he enters the Vale in a multi-million-dollar competition to fund its further development. But instead, things in the Vale begin to go wrong: The sunlight is fading. A beautiful girl appears from nowhere. A wizard is stealing from the Vale's inhabitants. And the strangest part of all is that none of this is the young inventor's doing. Can Bran and Gnomly uncover the truth of what is happening before both their worlds are destroyed?"--