The Lost City, by J. & P. Voelkel (EgmontUSA, Feb. 10, 2015), is the action-packed fourth and final book in the Jaguar Stones series. For three previous books, two kids have struggled (without success) to keep the powerful Jaguar Stones from falling into the hands of the Maya Death Lords who want to destroy the world. Max is an ordinary boy from Boston, Lola is an extraordinary Mayan girl, and together they, um, mostly just barely manage to ride the wild waves of mayhem that occur when the Death Lords rise up and start using social media......
The two kids and their unlikely allies (most notably two howler monkeys inhabited by an ancient Mayan king and his mom) set out (via submarine) to try once again to gain control of the Jaguar Stones. It's a journey that takes them to a haunted New Orleans (deadly in that special Mayan Death Lord way) and up the river to the city of Cahokia (the center of the Death Lord's social media campaign).
But the final showdown comes in a truly unexpected place--Fenway Park. And Red Sox fans
might even will get a bit teary as the team of heroes appears who will give the Death Lords the ball game of their lives....(Yankees fans, not so much).
Don't read this one if you haven't read the first three! But if you did enjoy the first books, you'll enjoy this one too. And if you are looking for a series of that mixes mythological madness with ordinary life in a wild and crazy way, The Jaguar Stones is a good choice. Facile though it is, "Mayan Percy Jackson"is not inaccurate. (Caveat: a tolerance for the absurd and the gross is required for true enjoyment! There are maggots, farts, and icky death-ness galore! More so than I myself really enjoy, but I'm not the target audience....)
If you'd like to win the entire series of four books, just leave a comment by midnight on Feb. 24! (US and Canada). One winner will receive soft-covers of
Middleworld,
The End of the World Club, and
The River of No Return (the links go to my reviews), and a hardcover of
The Lost City.
And now, the interview, with Pamela Voelkel! (thanks so much, Pamela, for your thoughtful answers!)
When you started writing Middleworld, did you have a map for
whole series, or did it grow and develop as you went? When you were writing The Lost City, was
there anything you wish you'd done differently back at the beginning?
We always
imagined the story as a trilogy, and we had all three books roughly mapped out.
We wrote the final paragraph of the last book early on, so we were always
working to that end point. One thing I'd change about MIDDLEWORLD is that I'd
make us work out the characters and subplots before we started writing the
story. I know it sounds like common sense, but for some reason we really made
things difficult for ourselves back then.
Everyone told us
that writing the second book in a trilogy is the hardest. "It can't just
be a bridge," our local children's librarian sternly warned us. "It
has to be a book in its own right, with a proper beginning, middle and end.
Don't disappoint me." So when THE END OF THE WORLD CLUB - possibly the
only book ever to take a rock 'n' roll angle on the Spanish Conquest - was
completed, I thought we were home and dry.
Book Three had
originally been set in New Orleans, but then Katrina had happened, so we'd
scratched that plot. Instead we invented an underground hotel deep in the
jungle, run by the ancient Maya Death Lords. There was so much ground to cover
for this last volume of the trilogy, so many loose ends to tie up, that the
first draft was thick as a doorstep. Our editor gave us two choices: either cut
it right down or start again and make it two books. She encouraged us to make
it two books because there was so much story left to tell. Characters had
acquired lives and opinions of their own, even the bad guys had been run
through the wringer. And we'd barely scratched the surface of the fun to be had
in an underground hotel run by the Death Lords.
So the
publication of Book Three was delayed while we started again from the very
beginning. The result was THE RIVER OF NO RETURN, which is the most
"Indiana Jones" type adventure of the series. Then there was an
unexpected gap between Book Three and Book Four while I had cancer treatment.
When I got my mojo back and started writing again, it felt right to include New
Orleans in Book Four because we were both survivors!
On the subject
of regrets, it's hard to say. I find it hard to stop editing until the very
last moment, so I always ALWAYS feel that anything I write - including this
piece - could be a million times better. But on the other hand, I'm just so
grateful that the Jaguar Stones series exists and that we were able to put
across so much Maya history and have so much fun with it. If I was writing the
first book, MIDDLEWORLD, again now, I'd try to relax a little and let Lord
6-Dog and Lady Coco reminisce more about the old days in the Maya court. But at
the time, we were overawed by the task. I could see all these kids, our
readers, in my head and I kept thinking that if we didn't move the action along
quickly enough, they'd lose interest and stop reading. That was always my goal:
keep 'em reading for one more page, one more page, one more page...
There isn't much fantasy for kids in the states that's based
in Latin America or draws on Mayan mythology. Did the fact that you were
venturing into new territory for middle grade fantasy affect the researching
and writing of these books? Do you have
any book recommendations for kids who've loved the Jaguar stones and want
more?
There are a few
Maya-themed picture books and some good factual books, but not much for
middle-grade - and nothing that goes where we go. All too often the Maya are
presented as bloodthirsty tyrants or noble savages. In reality, they were more
like the ancient Greeks - cultured, creative, political, and not averse to
waging terrible war on a neighbouring city-state.
Some reviewers
have described the Jaguar Stones as the Maya equivalent of the Percy Jackson
books and we love that idea! Our books set the adventures of two moody modern-day
teens against the zany world of Maya mythology. Of course, the mythology used
to be even zanier, but most of it has been lost. And that's the problem with
writing about the Maya. It's really hard to find the facts. It's only
relatively recently that archaeologists have been able to decipher Maya glyphs,
so most of what you read on the internet is inaccurate.
We didn't set
out to break new ground with the Jaguar Stones. In the beginning, the pyramids
were just a cool background to our adventure story. But there came a point
where we had to make a decision: are we going to do this properly or not? And
doing it properly meant spending family vacations in Central America,
befriending Maya people, attending archaeological conferences, even learning to
read and write Maya glyphs. It's been a huge undertaking and I wouldn't blame
anyone for balking at it. But we try to share our research through free lesson
plan CDs and downloads on our website. Maybe other authors can take advantage
of that!
Assuming they've
read everything by Rick Riordan, I'd advise a Jaguar Stones fan to discover the
work of Alan Garner. His book THE OWL SERVICE, set in the world of Welsh
mythology, is one of my all-time favourites. I might also direct them to
Beowulf, and collections of Icelandic mythology. And I'd definitely whisper
that Rick Riordan has a Norse-inspired series coming out soon...
Back in 2010, you wrote (for a guest post at this blog) that
"My dream is that one day, when our books have been translated into
Spanish, we’ll make school
visits in Guatemala" Has this come
to fruition yet?
No. And it kills
us, but We haven't given up hope. We're still in touch with Jesus Antonio, the
education advocate who inspired us in Guatemala. We have been fortunate
enough to make school visits in Chiapas in Southern Mexico - but without the
books in Spanish. Luckily, Jon is bilingual and I have high school Spanish, so
we manage quite well. We were thrilled to speak at an English language library
in Yucatan, where the patrons are learning English - so that was the best of
both worlds. We often do bilingual presentations in schools in North
America too.
But if I can be
honest, Charlotte, this whole issue confounds me. I feel guilty to be writing about the
Maya, maybe even being part of the #weneeddiversebooks movement, but not being
remotely Maya myself. Our connection is that Jon grew up in South and Central
America. On our travels, I've talked to many Maya girls and women, and I try to
channel their voices. But I have no doubt that any one of them, given my
resources, could write a better book than I. Through Max, a kid from Boston and
one of our main characters, I try to express this angst. If, like Rick Riordan,
we were just concerned with ancient mythology, I wouldn't feel this way. But,
as far as I know, no one else is writing about Maya kids right now. I hope that
we're helping to bridge the gap between North and Central America. Teachers
have told us that students of Maya descent take a new pride in their identity
after reading our books - and that makes me proud.
Now that the story of the Jaguar stones has come to an end,
what's next for you?
Short-term we
have the Tucson Festival of Books in mid-March, followed by a book tour in
California, plus trips to New Orleans, Iowa and Texas. Longer term, another
book is simmering, but I don't like to talk about new projects because somehow
the talking negates the writing. It makes me feel like I've already written it and the hard work is done - which
it isn't, at all!
And finally, in as much as the great final confrontation is a
baseball game at Fenway Park--are you Red Sox fans?
YOU BETCHA! But,
as I I hope you gathered from the game in the book, it's not the sport that
hooks us. It's the atmosphere of Fenway Park and the roller-coaster emotion of
being a Red Sox fan.
And now, the bonus (short) list of Speculative Fiction rooted in/based on/inspired by Mayan mythology and culture:
Summer
of the Mariposas, by Guadalupe Garcia McCall
Sea
of the Dead, by Julia Durango
Starfields, by Carolyn Marsden
Anyone know of any other books to add?
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