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JAKE RANSOM AND THE SKULL KING'S SHADOW
By: James Rollins
Harper: New York City
2010 (pb)
Some time ago I received a suggestion to occasionally
review fiction for young readers that used archaeological themes. With
summer vacation almost upon us, I thought this would be a good time to give
it a try. What I will try to do on an admittedly irregular basis is review
books that I think would be interesting to young readers and perhaps
even their parents! In some cases I might even suggest that a parent read
the book to their child—a practice I remember with great fondness
when my kids were young.
So this first foray into kid lit will be James
Rollins’s Jake Ransom and the Skull King’s Shadow. Rollins is quite
well known in the action-thriller genre of adult literature, and he brings a
good deal of the cliffhanger, edge-of-your-seat action found in his adult
novels to this, his first book aimed at readers “ages 10 up.” He was also
selected by George Lucas to pen the novelization of Indiana Jones and the
Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and, in fact, the opening prologue reads
much like the opening scenes of an Indiana Jones movie. Dr. Henry Bethel,
Oxford University professor of archaeology and friend of American
archaeologists Penelope and Richard Ransom, is fleeing bandits who are
chasing him from the Montana de Huesos (the Mountain of Bones) in the Mayan
lowland jungles on the Belize-Mexico border. His friends, Penelope and
Richard Ransom, have mysteriously disappeared and before dying he is able to
pass on a mysterious package addressed to “Master Jacob Bartholomew Ransom,
North Hampshire, Connecticut.” The package, delivered to ten year old Jake
Ransom and his older sister, Kady, contains their mother’s sketchbook, their
father’s field diary and two halves of a mysterious token engraved with a
Mayan glyph.
The story then picks up three years later with Jake an
8th grader at Middleton Prep and his sister Kady in high school.
They live at Ravengate Manor, the family home, with caretakers who have
taken over parenting roles since the disappearance of their parents. Jake
is a slightly nerdy but very bright young man, with a deep interest in the
sciences—especially archaeology and anthropology—and a propensity to be
picked on by bigger football players types. Kady is a vivacious, outgoing
cheerleader with a propensity towards dating bigger football player types
and a constant fear of being embarrassed by her little brother! But both
desperately miss their parents and wish more than anything for their safe
return.
The plot commences when Jake and Kady receive an
invitation to the grand opening of the British Museum exhibit, “Mayan
Treasures of the New World,” which is an homage to the excavations conducted
by Penelope and Richard Ransom sponsored by Bledsworth Sundries and
Industries, Inc. Accompanying the invitations are two airline tickets to
London.
They arrive in London and are whisked away to the
British Museum by the mysterious Morgan Drummond of Bledsworth Sundries.
Mysterious things begin to happen at the British Museum exhibition and when
Jake finds that the two halves of the Mayan token sent to them after his
parents’ disappearance fit perfectly into an artifact on display at the
exact moment of a total solar eclipse, he and Kady are catapulted into a
world they never dreamed of and into an adventure beyond their
imaginations!
They find a land populated by what appear to be ancient
Mayans, Vikings, Romans, and even Neanderthals—all living in and around the
city-state of Calypsos, whose architecture is a mixture of roman villas,
Viking longhouses, a medieval castle, African huts on stilts, proto-pueblo
cliff dwellings, and an Egyptian obelisk. And over the city looms a giant
pyramid, topped by a statue of the Mayan feathered serpent god, Kukulcan.
If that were not enough, the surrounding countryside also harbors a T-Rex,
along other relicts of the Age of Dinosaurs!
Jake and Kady are befriended by Marika, a young Mayan
girl, and Pindor, a Roman boy, who take them before the Council of Elders of
Calypsos, and slowly the bewildering world into which they have tumbled
begins to make some crazy kind of sense, and Jake realizes that somehow or
someway, these Lost Tribes (as they refer to themselves) have been wrenched
out of their own times and space and brought to Calypsos—why or for what
reason no one seems to know.
But it isn’t long before it becomes abundantly clear
that all is not as peaceful in Calypsos as appears on the surface, for the
very existence of Calypsos is threatened by Kalverum Rex—the Skull
King—and his hideous minions, the Grakyls, evil winged creatures resulting
from the alchemy practiced by their dark leader. The battle for Calypsos
seems to center on the presence of Jake and Kady and it is only through the
bravery of the two Ransom siblings and their new found friends, Marika and
Pindor, that the Skull King’s plans are foiled—at least temporarily. During
the battle with the Skull King within the confines of the Mayan pyramid,
Jake finds a modern pocket watch—a watch owned by his father! Do Jake and
Kady dare hope there might be some slight hope that their parents are still
alive, and that their disappearance is somehow linked to this mysterious
world on the edge of Nowhere? Perhaps the reader will find out some of the
answers to these and other puzzling questions in the next volume, Jake
Ransom and the Howling Sphinx!
This is an entertaining, exciting –perhaps even a bit
scary for very young readers—and well written adventure novel. The author
is not at all condescending to his young readers, and in fact, expects quite
a lot of them as he teases out some of the arcane secrets of Calypsos. It
also underscores the importance of friendship and shared sacrifice among
friends, and in Jake and Kady we find a brother and sister who begin as
conventional sibling rivals and grow to respect and love each other as they
battle shoulder to shoulder—always hoping that perhaps together they might
yet find their lost parents.
Four trowels for this engaging and exciting novel for
young readers—of all ages!
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