A Scattering of Jades

Alexander C. Irvine

Macmillan, Jul 5, 2002 - Fiction - 428 pages

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.

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - fireweaver - LibraryThing

I'm a wine drinker who happens to dislike beer. I have a buddy who's wired the other way around, and has me taste things when he's sure the sun rises and sets in whatever glass he's in love with at ...

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - Verus - LibraryThing

A Scattering of Jades tells a dark, arcane story, so if you don't like that sort of thing, don't bother reading it. It concerns an ancient plot to bring into power a malevolent Aztec deity, Tlaloc ...

About the author

Alexander Irvine is a native of Ypsilanti, Michigan. His extraordinary stories have appeared in such places as The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, and Starlight 3. He is a descendant of P T. Barnum and once worked as a roller-skating waiter. He currently resides in New England with his wife and twins.

Bibliographic information

• Title: A Scattering of Jades; A Tom Doherty Associates book; Tor fantasy
• Author: Alexander C. Irvine
• Edition: revised
• Publisher: Macmillan, 2002
• ISBN: 0765301164, 9780765301161
• Length: 428 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / Fantasy / Contemporary