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March 2009
Nightkeepers by Jessica Andersen
Paula Chaffee Scardamalia is the award-winning author of Weaving a Woman's Life: Spiritual Lessons from the Loom and a freelance writer for national online and print publications. With more than 20 years of study of shamanic dream techniques, myth and symbols, Paula weaves dreams, tarot, myths and fairytales into personal consultations, workshops and seminars that suggest pathways for action and empower choices for transformation. She writes about creativity, dreams and a woman's life at www.weavingthedream.com/blog.
Science fiction and fantasy are not the only genres to use an impending apocalyptic end to the world as a dramatic backdrop for story, but combine that plot element with finely crafted world building and you have a good read that has you turning pages faster than the ticking of a doomsday clock. Jessica Andersen proves herself a master mixer in her debut novel, Nightkeepers, the first in her Final Prophecy series. The Final Prophecy is the prediction by the Mayan calendar that the world will end on December 21, 2012, the winter solstice and the time of the Great Conjunction when the Earth, Sun and Moon align at the exact center of the Milky Way. Good reason for Striking-Jaguar, "you can call me Strike", to take up his kingly responsibilities and call together the less than a dozen remaining Nightkeepers, descendants of an ancient race sworn to protect mankind and prevent the apocalypse. Scattered in secrecy throughout the country and raised from infancy as normal humans but told the ancient myths and magic by their winikin, (a combination guardian and servant), all, including Strike, are less than enthusiastic and even cynical about dropping their lives to save humankind against an enemy they doubt exists. But gather they do at the former training compound in the New Mexico badlands, and in their gathering Andersen deftly introduces a cast of heroes and heroines whose stories you eagerly anticipate in future novels — Coyote-Seven, Blackhawk, White Eagle, Alexis, Jade, and others. But this is Strike's story — and it is Miami Dade Narcotics Detective, Leah Ann Daniels' story which begins when she is kidnapped by Zipacna, the very guy she suspects of murdering her brother and who she thinks is a drug lord but in truth is acting as earthly servant and priest to the Banal Kax, ruler of the Underworld. Strapped to a stone altar in a cave deep beneath the surface, Leah is about to be sacrificed by Zipacna in order to have her body given over to the possession of a demon when Strike, directed by the gods, rescues her. But this is apparently not all Strike is supposed to do for Leah, because inexplicably neither Strike nor Leah can resist the sexual and emotional attraction that flares up between them. Although echoing other authors' use of sex and magic as the motivating dynamic that brings together hero and heroine, Andersen frames the ancestral magic based on sex and bloodletting within the context of the sacred. The sex is not sex for its sake or even for love's sake. It is more. The first union of Strike and Leah happens on an altar and symbolizes the physical manifestation of the sacred union of the God and Goddess, of dark and light. Even in their final lovemaking scene in the book, again on an altar, there is a sense of the presence of the sacred and the enacting of a ritual that implies larger energies at work. The challenges of a first novel in a series — introducing the cast of characters, building the world and the mythology, creating the larger themes and motivations — is not an easy thing to do gracefully. Andersen could be a ballerina, so light and deft is her touch. And her voice... she writes mostly from Strike's point of view so her language is brisk, pithy, and sprinkled with the phrases and terms that seem so male: "He'd known the Nightkeepers had begun arriving the night before and had even seen some of the luggage when he'd zapped in, chowed a snack, and gone to bed. But somehow he'd thought he'd have a chance to confab with Jox and Red-Boar before meeting the newbies." And no clichéd descriptions for Andersen, who uses delightful metaphors and similes with a twist of humor. "Then again, maybe it was because of those differences that it worked so well, even though just being near her godmother made Alexis feel huge, ungainly, and loud, like a flatulent elephant in an antiques store." (Take that, bull in a china shop!) Even better, when Strike leaves a rental car in a bad neighborhood: "He set the alarm, and the mini-van gave an ineffective sounding beep-beep and blinked its lights twice, like an obedient poodle sit-staying in the middle of a minefield." If it sounds as though I can't say enough about this book and why you should read it, it's because I can't. The next book in the series, Dawnkeepers, was released in January and the only reason I don't have it yet is because I intend to go to a conference and get a signed copy to add to the autographed copy of Nightkeepers. I intend to buy the complete series. After all, I want to make sure that the Nightkeepers do their job and we are all still around on December 22, 2012.
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