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Jack Of Ravens (Kingdom Of The Serpent book 1) by Mark Chadbourn
01/02/2007 . Source: Donna Jones 
Pub: Gollancz. 436 page enlarged paperback. Price: £12.99 (UK only). ISBN: 0-575-07800-6. Buy Jack Of Ravens in the USA - or Buy Jack Of Ravens in the UK  check out website: www.orionbooks.co.uk
Jack 'Church' Churchill risked it all to save humanity from the Fomorii. He found love, experienced betrayal and a responsibility that was bigger than anyone could understand was thrust upon him. But it wasn't over and suddenly Church has found himself in the furthest place from home he can imagine: he is lost in time.
Little did he think that his background in archaeology would prove so relevant. He finds himself in 100 BC with a tribe of people who fear giants and desperately want the Golden Ones to leave them alone and let them forge their own destiny without meddling and trickster games.
The only problem is that Church can't remember what he needs to overcome his predicament. His memory is shot and he has a hideous black spider buried into the flesh of his shoulder. Despite the distance of time and the lack of solid memories in his mind, Church knows he doesn't belong and eventually with the help of a familiar Golden One, he manages to make bunny hops through the timeline.
Unfortunately, the real issue isn't finding his way back through time and to the present but to find out what the meaning of the Army of Ten Billion Spiders is and how it can be stopped. They're changing history and building themselves into a strong dark evil that threatens existence at its very core.
Can Church regain his memories and knowledge of the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons to defeat this massing foe or will he be so removed from time that the spiders and the powers that wield them take over humanity and destroy it in the process?
Mark Chadbourn is primarily known for his 'Age Of Misrule' trilogy which...ahem, is actually continued in this book. It's quite succinctly written that people coming to the Jack Churchill Saga can start here if they wish. You do get hints and handy info bursts on where the story left off and what has happened previously.
The story is well developed and follows a similar kind of thought process as the 'Age Of Misrule' trilogy but it seems to deal with the situation with more focus on the characters motivations and their sympathies towards their loves and betrayals. It could have been wet and limp taking this line, but in the end it just endears you to the characters we already know and love.
There are a couple of points I would have to disagree on though. While there is time travel involved in this book, it is not Science Fiction. While there is also gore of a horrific nature, this is not a horror novel. No, 'Jack Of Ravens' has its feet squarely and solidly planted into the realm of urban and faerie fantasy. The time travel is enabled either by the forces of evil trying to manipulate history or the faerie folk to whom so much trouble but seemingly in this volume, so much help has been offered Churchill. The gore, generally emanating from the evil characters and a dark limbed man we all know and love as Veitch is brutally enabled by the dark forces. It's sometimes a harsh portrayal of treachery and an overall sense that replacing a loved one or making do with anyone but your true love is a pretty bad idea. Also a pretty rotting corpse of a woman trying to mow you down.
Chadbourn also takes his main protagonist and isolates him in a fear that if he screws up he'll kill many ancestors of the Brothers and Sisters of Dragons. This and the fact that the first four are now hot on his heels to avenge their own deaths upon him even though he didn't cast the killing blows, strikes me as a good way in pushing the boundaries of Church's character. At times it works, other times it results in this constipation of deciding what to do next. I felt that it gave the reader this teetering on the edge feel without much draw to the next dilemma.
All in all, though, there is a sense of 'been here before' about this book. I read it expecting something fresh and vibrant and in the end I felt as if this was an attempt to relive the lives of the characters in 'Age Of Reason'. Five flawed characters seems the buzzwords for these stories and yet their flaws aren't made half as representational of them as people as maybe they should. Turning back the clock at the hands of a new dark foe could have gone one of two ways. It could have been an improvement on what had already been written or it could have been a rehash of it with much the same details. I think that this book is hovering between the two. The sentimentality makes it plumb new depths, but the treading in footfalls we've already taken with the Veitch treachery and the bringing together of the five flawed characters needed something more. Possibly this is a warm-up book for the books to come. I'm dearly hoping so.
Donna Jones
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