"Strongly written sword-and-sorcery story with an sf denouement!"
Here is a lost classic of lost valleys, intelligent animals and alien intervention. Eric Nelson is one of a desperate band of soldiers of fortune who have fought on the losing side in a war and eagerly take on a mysterious assignment deep in the borderlands of Tibet. There, in a legendary valley, Shan Kar, the man who has hired them, tells Nelson and the other mercenaries that their weapons are humankind's last ditch defense against the valley's intelligent animals, who plan to take over the world. If they are successful, the mercenaries' reward will be a fabulous treasure in platinum not far from the city of the animals.
But after an encounter with a warrior-maid who fights alongside the animals, and another with a telepathic wolf, Nelson wonders if he has been told the whole story. To find out he will have to enter the city of the animals, have his own personality transferred into the body of a wolf and run with the pack. Little does this cynical soldier realize that this will be an experience which will change him forever.
It's no wonder The Science Fiction Encyclopedia calls The Valley of Creation "A strongly-written sword-and-sorcery story with an sf denouement...carefully composed and dark in texture."