Customer Reviews

A Scattering of Jades

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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.

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.

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.

Let me tell you where I'm coming from.

I bought Alexander Irvine's "A Scattering of Jades" because of the many reviewers suggesting a story reminiscent of Tim Powers, but I should have known better. That's like buying Klaatu because they sound a little like The Beatles. What you're hoping for is that pure, cherry high you felt the first time you loaded "Revolver" onto your turntable, but what you get is, well, Klaatu. Not that it's bad, it's just not what you wanted.

So I'm giving you permission to disregard this review; as a fan of Tim Powers (Fan? No. Admirer. Devotee. Stalker.) I was hoping for a fully-conceived universe, a true secret history of the world in which we live, an organized and internally consistent system of magic. What I got was "A Scattering of Jades".

This novel really has nothing to do with history, other than taking place in the nineteenth century. Some obvious historical figures pop in from time to time, like Edgar Poe, PT Barnum and Aaron Burr, but their presences are perfunctory, slickly professional rather than enlightening or surprising. The author makes repeated references to Burr's desire to rule the United States, but this idea is merely a jumping off point for the story rather than pivotal information.

The main character, Archie Prescott, is a typesetter for a New York paper who dreams of being a journalist, but the sudden death of his wife and daughter send him spiraling into depression. Sadly, most of this book follows Archie around as he stumbles into trouble again and again, never really rising to the challenges facing him.

The plot, which concerns an evil snakeoil salesman named Riley Steen, is confusing and, ultimately, not very interesting, even though it contains long-dead Aztec gods, killer jaguar mummies and a hilarious zombie named John Diamond who insists on calling Archie "Presto".

The long and short of it: Aaron Burr discovered an ancient text predicting the end of the world and it's rebirth and attempted to use the knowledge in this document in order to make himself King of this new world. The plan failed, but years later Riley Steen, who was one of Burr's co-conspirators but is now a minor traveling magician and purveyor of tonics and potions takes up the call and attempts to re-enact the plan. It is Steen who causes the death of Archie's wife, though he kidnaps Archie's daughter and puts a decoy body in her place. Prescott eventually tumbles to the plan and attempts to rescue his daughter, getting sucked into saving the world as an afterthought.

A likeable character, slave Stephen Bishop, also seems to be an afterthought. He is an expert on the Mammoth Cave, where the jaguar mummy lives, and gets peripherally drawn into the plot, but never takes on a role that justifies the amount of space devoted to him.

This is a book that intends to handle large, majestic and monumental events, but in the end it feels cramped and small, as though Irvine could not settle comfortably into the world he created.

Aaron Burr is dead and the memory of his aborted attempt to create an empire in the west is largely faded, yet some remember. Riley Steen knows that Burr's hopes were based on Aztec mythology, on an ancient god whose mystic calendar is now coming due. With skill and planning, Steen intends to create what Burr failed at--and is willing to pay any price to make it happen. Printer Archie Prescott knows that his daughter is dead, that the crazy girl who calls him 'da' cannot be Jane. Yet he involves himself with a strange mezo-American mummy that comes to life in New York. Torn by images of destruction, and followed by Steen's killers, Archie heads from New York, across 19th century America, to the Mammoth caves of Kentucky where the magic of the great cycle is taking place and where a new world may be created. Slave Stephen Bishop yearns for a freedom that will never be given him. The emerging god offers him freedom for himself and his children, but only in return for a high price. Only Stephen knows the caves well enough to prevent the magic--or to protect the god.

Author Alexander C. Irvine creates a powerful alternate history where magic works unseen to most, but remains powerful. Irvine's images of the world of the dead, where the dead's belief in the gods they created continue to sustain the gods' powers is strong and compelling. Irvine's world could be our own, yet zombies walk and gods carve their way into men's hearts. The skillful use of the somewhat obscure history of Aaron Burr's attempted empire (since history was written by Burr's enemies, we may never know his real motivations and goals), gives A SCATTERING OF JADES a verisimilitude that definitely adds to the reader's enjoyment

A Scattering of Jades is firmly in Tim Powers territory. It's a fantasy cum secret history dealing with obscure gods and magic impinging on the life of an ordinary man. The man ends up injured, just as most of Powers' heroes, and he must make a desperate journey, trusting implausible forces, to save a loved one. In this case, the gods are mostly Aztec gods, particularly Tlaloc, with a leavening of Lenni Lenape gods. And the "secret history" is of the United States, dealing with Aaron Burr's mad ambitions and their aftermath, and more directly with the most horrible blot on U.S. history: slavery.

The novel turns on a plot devised by Riley Steen, an associate of Burr's. Following on some discoveries Burr supposedly made, Steen has determined that if he can find a certain "chacmool", or mummy, to help channel the power of the Aztec god Tlaloc, and if he can create the perfect young virgin sacrifice to Tlaloc, a "new sun" will dawn in 1843. A new world will be created, and Steen believes he will be the temporal power in this world. To this end, he causes Jane Prescott, the daughter of a New York would-be journalist named Archie Prescott, to be burned horribly. He captures Jane in the aftermath of the fire, in which Archie believes she died along with his wife. Some years later, Jane escapes back to New York, to haunt an unbelieving Archie with her claim that she is his long-lost still-living daughter. Meanwhile, Steen finally manages to locate the chacmool, who is found in Mammoth Cave by a slave named Stephen Bishop.

The main plot revolves around Archie's semi-coincidental involvement with the chacmool, which Steen has temporarily stashed in P.T. Barnum's American Museum. Archie stumbles upon the chacmool awakening to its power, and after nearly dying on a couple of occasions, he finds himself somehow linked to it. Finally he believes in Jane's claim that she is his daughter, but too late: she is under the chacmool's power, kidnapped again and taken to Mammoth Cave to be a willing sacrifice. Archie must travel halfway across America to find his daughter, and to reconcile his own desires with those of Stephen Bishop, Jane, and two old gods. Meanwhile Stephen must weigh Tlaloc's promise of freedom from slavery with his own sense of morality; while a variety of dead people and other gods also try to interfere.

The story is exciting enough, and the ending is well-done and satisfying. But along the way I was unconvinced on a couple of grounds. Most problematic was the motivations of various characters, who seemed to do the plot's bidding against all good sense. Likewise, all the characters leaped too rapidly, to my mind, to belief in some truly weird happenings. Finally, I never really engaged emotionally, or mythically, with the old gods Irvine describes. Pure and simply, they and their powers did not resonate with me. So the novel was somewhat interesting, but not wholly satisfying. Nonetheless, it's a promising debut for an author I will continue to watch closely.

The characters , story , and writing ; all are superbly

composed! Quite simply one of the best books I've read

in some time! A work very well done by this author,who if

he sticks to this formula, he can't lose!!!

Alexander Irvine's, _A Scattering of Jades_ is an interesting work of historical occult fiction set in 1840's America.

The novel is well-plotted, and full of those interesting factoids that are required to create an interesting "parallel history". The reader learns interesting tidbits on topics ranging from "The Burr Conspiracy" (an actual historical event I had never heard of) to the origins of New York's Tammany Hall.

Have you ever heard of Harman Blennerhasset? St. Tammany? Me neither. Mix these elements with Aztec mysticism, throw in Mammoth Cave for good measure, and you've got yourself a story!

If the novel has a shortcoming, it is the character development, which I felt could have been stronger. The characters always felt distant to me, giving the whole affair a rather clinical, cold, feeling.

Overall, I recommend this novel, especially to those of us who are in to this genre.

This was a solid, good book. It kept me reading, especially towards the end, and the gods were exquisitely rendered by Irvine.
It was a bit jarring at first, and a bit unbelievable with the way the mesoamerican gods supposedly tied in with history heavyweights such as Aaron Burr and PT Barnum. But eventually (about a quarter of the way through the book) the wierdness wore off and I began to enjoy the story more. At it's most basic form the story reminded me of the movie "The Mummy," but transposed to American myths.
There is a lot of good description and effectively creepy stuff going on here, especially the parts where the chacmool creates old Aztec mosters out of humans. Lots of fun to read and think about, and the best characterization of Aztec gods I've found in any novel!

There are authors who write well and there are authors who are good story-tellers; few it seems are both. Mr. Irvine appears to be among the rare few blessed with both talents. A "Scattering of Jades" is the most absorbing book I've read since Terry Goodkind's "Wizard's First Rule". As with all those who make a dramatically compelling entry, expectations rise that perhaps we've seen just a first effort of rare genius and the best is yet to come. Mr. Goodkind disapponited with follow on books that were no more than slight and sometimes tortured variations on a good first book.

Now we wait to see if Mr. Irvine will fulfill the promise.

A "Scattering of Jades" has a strong feeling of authenticity. Mr. Irvine can invoke passionate sympathy or antipathy for his characters. He gives his evil charaters enough redeeming virtue and his good charaters enough flaws to make them real. His description is compelling and his narrative and dialog are not stilted. Altogether a book that I hated to put down and eagerly searched for time to continue reading.

What will Mr. Irvine do with just a little more tempering?