A Scattering of Jades [Hardcover]

Alexander C. Irvine (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 5, 2002

The great fire of 1835 burned most of New York City's wooden downtown. Like many people, Archie Prescott thought he had lost everything. His home was a smoldering ruin, his dead wife's body at his feet. And next to her is a child's corpse he assumes was his daughter. It seems like the end of everything.

But it is only the beginning.

Goaded into action by New York Herald publisher James Gordon Bennett, Archie runs afoul of one of P. T. Barnum's former sideshow workers, Riley Steen. With the help of an ancient book translated by Aaron Burr, Steen has resurrected a chacmool. This ageless Mesoamerican avatar plans to use the blood of Archie's still-living daughter to bring about the end of humanity.

At the same time, Stephen Bishop guides tourists through the Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. Stephen, a slave, wants nothing more than a world where the color of his skin doesn't deny his humanity. His fateful first meeting with the chacmool leads him to believe that the promise it offers may bring him to such a world.

In the midst of ancient magic and murderous conspiracies, Archie finds himself with the power to save the world or drown it in sacrificial blood . . . but first he has to stop mourning his daughter and undertake a grim cross-country journey to save her.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Alexander C. Irvine makes a strong debut with A Scattering of Jades, a novel that can be read with equal validity as fantasy, alternate history, or secret history. In 1835, an attempted human sacrifice goes awry, sparking a fire that consumes much of Manhattan and destroys journalist Archie Prescott's home and family. Stephen Bishop, a slave exploring a Kentucky cave system, discovers a peculiar Aztec mummy that seems, sometimes, to move. A complex conspiracy involving Aaron Burr, P.T. Barnum, Tammany Hall, Irish gangsters, and a traveling medicine man will bring together Archie, Stephen, an accursed girl who may be Archie's daughter, and ferocious Aztec deities in the underworld of Mammoth Cave, in an epic struggle that will determine the fate of the earth. --Cynthia Ward

From Publishers Weekly

Thanks to its vivid 19th-century setting, this debut horror novel rises considerably above the average. In the great New York fire of 1835 that kills his wife, newspaper typesetter Archie Prescott thinks he's also lost his four-year-old daughter, Jane. But Jane has survived, hideously scarred and kidnapped by Riley Steen, who once worked for P.T. Barnum. Steen possesses a chacmool, a Mesoamerican mummy through which a proper sacrifice will bring the god Tlaloc to rule the world. That proper sacrifice is Jane Prescott. By 1843, once Prescott realizes that he's in danger and that Jane is alive, he pursues her and Steen down the Ohio River to Mammoth Cave, where Steen found the chacmool years before. After a nightmare journey facing both human and occult menaces, Prescott confronts those who seek his daughter's blood. With the help of a guide, the slave Stephen Bishop (willing to risk his chances of freedom to prevent Jane's murder), he attempts to snatch Jane back to safety. While the plot may be fairly standard, with its theme of "old gods seeking revenge/return," Irving provides a fascinating, unromanticized picture of P.T. Barnum's early career, the bloodthirsty gangs of New York, life on the Ohio River and the precarious condition of even the most privileged slaves. The characterization is nearly as accomplished as the historiography, and the two together make the book an exceedingly solid achievement, with a great deal of promise for the author's future.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Tor Books; 1st edition (July 5, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765301164
• ISBN-13: 978-0765301161
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,406,862 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Native of Ypsilanti, Michigan. Writer of books, comics, games etc. Fan of Detroit sports, any and all soccer. PhD, former professor. Father of three. Resident of Maine. Favorite writers, in no particular order: Cervantes, Borges, Murakami, Dick, Pynchon, Herriman, Chaucer, Kelly. Ask me again tomorrow, the list would be slightly different.

Some favorite books, not written by people on the previous list (but all written by people who might have been on the list on a different day), and again in no particular order: Sarah Canary, Gould's Book of Fish, Geek Love, Midnight's Children, Song of Solomon...

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best first novel in years!, July 8, 2002

By 

John Klima (Bettendorf, IA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Scattering of Jades (Hardcover)

Alex Irvine's writing carries a maturity that most writers don't reach for several novels. It's incredible to think that he's this good out of the gate. This book is on par with other first novels, SONG OF KALI by Dan Simmons and NEUROMANCER by William Gibson, although those books are of a different genre than SCATTERING OF JADES.

The writing in this novel is very reminiscent of Charles de Lint or Tim Powers; magical, earthy, and powerful. I really enjoy novels that pull real historical figures into them and this book seamlessly blends reality and fantasy.

Irvine is a writer you will hear from for a long time. This book should be on your must-read list for this year.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Scattering of Jades, June 19, 2002

By 

Max Callodion (Scranton, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Scattering of Jades (Hardcover)

I was lucky enough to get my hands on a pre-publication proof of this book. If you like mystery, history, adventure, metaphysics, ideas of the past that resonate with today, great characterization, literal and figurative descents into the underworld, and fine writing, this book is for you. A really amazing first novel. I can't wait to see what this guy does next.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 'Never again shall you return', October 1, 2002

By 

Marc Ruby™ "The Noh Hare™" (Warren, MI USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: A Scattering of Jades (Hardcover)

I select my 'next book to read' by picking through what it waiting on my shelves and reading a few pages here and there. It is a rare experience when a book I start out to take a quick look at suddenly becomes the one I am reading to the exclusion of all else. Of course, authors who can pick up a mythology and create a compelling and original story out of it are equally uncommon. Alexander Irvine is not the first who has essayed the fertile ground of Aztec legend, but, by setting the story in the U.S. of the 1840's, a deeper and more modern significance than one would anticipate. This is a tale about monsters, but it is not a monster story.

The story turns on the awakening of a chacmool, an Aztec avatar of the god Tlaloc, who seeks to recreate the world via a series of magical acts and a final sacrifice. Set against the machinations of Riley Steen, who has prepared the way for the chacmool is Archie Prescott, who lost his wife and daughter Jane in fires magically set to mark the young girl as the intended sacrifice. Completely distracted by the loss, Prescott is at his nadir when a sequence of events reveals to him that Jane is still alive and provides him with a new purpose to his life. A series of eerie encounters sets him on Jane's path in an effort to prevent the sacrifice.

The result is a mage's journey across the U.S., from New York City to the Mammoth Cave in far Kentucky. At each step in this mythic journey, he meets adversity, and enemies as inconstant as are his friends. Seemingly random events flow together for him in an almost foreordained pattern. As Prescott proceeds on his own path Stephen Bishop, a Negro slave and guide to Mammoth Cave, begins his own interior journey, enticed into providing aid and support to the chacmool in return for a promise of freedom for himself and his children. This subtle subtext on the nature and effect of slavery molds both men as they proceed to their meeting in the caverns below.

The parallels between the men are carefully constructed. Each seeks the salvation of his children. Archie must learn to see the dark, and Stephen to see in the dark. Both are manipulated and molded by events, and each learns something from the dignity and strength of the other. For the reader, this is simply one of the more important facets of a surprisingly complex tale of fantasy and alternate history. Among the guest appearances that dot the novel are Edgar Allen Poe and Aaron Burr as Irvine proves himself adept in using history as a mystery play.

You will find yourself reminded at times of Tim Power and Neil Gaiman. While I do not think that Irvine has achieved the quality of either, that he can evoke echoes of them is one of the best of signs. 'A Scattering of Jades' is one of the best debut novels I have seen this year, and one I heartily recommend.