A group of explorers search for the legendary "flame of life", a mysterious force that bestows immortality.

Leo Vincey, told by his dying uncle of a lost land visited 500 years ago by his ancestor, heads out with family friend Horace Holly to try to discover the land and its secret of immortality, said to be contained within a mystic fire. Picking up Tanya, a guide's daughter, in the frozen Russian arctic, they stumble upon Kor, revealed to be a hidden civilization ruled over by an immortal queen, called She, who believes Vincey is her long-lost lover John Vincey, Leo's ancestor.—Doug Sederberg <[email protected]>

Believing that he is on his deathbed, Briton John Vincey summons his only surviving relation, his American nephew, young adult Leo Vincey, to embark on a mission started five centuries ago by their ancestor also named John Vincey, who Leo physically resembles. John and his colleague Horace Holly have evidence that the elder John Vincey, on an expedition, had found an unknown element that was the key to immortality, the element contained in what is called the flame of life. The elder never returned from the expedition with the secret. Even if it cannot save him, the younger John Vincey wants Leo to continue that work with Holly, which takes them to the far north in Siberia. Along the way, they meet and have to bring along an opportunist named Dugmore and his young adult daughter Tanya, Dugmore who will only provide the necessary guides on the caveat that he is cut in on what he sees as this potentially lucrative expedition. Through some close calls, they discover the ancient civilization of Kor, its ruler calling herself She. She is the keeper of the flame, and believing Leo truly to be John the elder, her former love, offers him and only him the key to that immortality with her. Beyond being separated from Tanya with who he has fallen in love, Leo is not told of the other sacrifices that go along with this arrangement.—Huggo