Reviews
Eric Gibson has written an action-packed archaeological thriller here, a wild and astonishing ride from the ivy-covered walls of Harvard to the tropical rain forests of Central America. His anthropological observations that are woven through the fabric of the narrative are that cocktail of mystery and mastery that make for entertaining and informative discovery. I was constantly wondering what would happen next, and was surprised by the outcome. Gibson knows his territory and invokes a magic of the Maya that I last felt when I slept in the jungle ruins of Palenque in Chiapas. Gibson writes like Elmore Leonard in tweeds, or at times, Stephen King with a machete.
Richard Reed, Ph.D.
Professor of Anthropology
Trinity University
San Antonio, TX
*****
I’m a professional academic, so I read constantly. I read academic journals and books and books of edited papers to keep up with my field, and I teach so I also read student papers constantly. When I am not reading I am either writing or teaching, which requires writing lectures. What this means is that my job involves reading a lot of really dry serious prose and a lot of really awful prose. I don’t mean the student’s writing is always bad, some of my students write quite well, but archaeologists in general do not write either very charmingly or very well, even when they manage to be clear. And my teaching involves trying to make clear to nonprofessional and professionals alike what I do and why it is important and interesting that I do it.
When I have the time to read for pleasure, I like to read poetry and I like to read mysteries. In fact I don’t know any archaeologists who do not read mysteries. Maybe this is because we spend long periods away from television in field camps, but I think it is also because our profession selects for mystery lovers. I have read all of: Martha Grimes, Sue Grafton, Patricia Cornwell, Aaron Elkins (before the golfer), Arthur Upfield, Dick Francis, Tony Hillerman, Sharon McCrumb, Sara Paretsky, Dorothy Gilmore, John D. MacDonald, Carl Hiassen, Robert Parker, Minette Walters, and most of Anne Perry, Ellis Peters, Ngaio Marsh, Elizabeth Peters, Rex Stout, and Agatha Christie. And I have also read countless others whose names I only bother to remember in the bookstore. I have published about 20 professional papers and a monograph and am at present working on two books (not fiction). I read the mysteries for total escape, so perhaps that is why I find so few archaeological or historical mysteries satisfying. Usually I find myself on a “busman’s holiday” and put the book down after about a chapter. First of all, modern mysteries are usually written with an eye on the bottom line, aimed at an uncritical audience to say the least. I hate reading something full of dangling participles, and incomplete sentences, not to mention skanky predictable plots and unoriginal stories. About half the mysteries I try to read are about like something written by a sophomore college student, and edited by a senior employed part-time in the university writing center. By the end of page one, my brain has gone into automatic editorial mode and I am mentally adding commas and circling malapropisms. This is no fun, since I already feel guilty for taking the time away from grading papers for real. Some of the very worst have been written by archaeologists who mostly seem to believe they could write a mystery if only they had time. Phooey.
Second, and much more important, it’s no fun to read a book about my field that violates all the principles I have dedicated my life to upholding. In most archaeological mysteries the looters and the collectors are the heroes. That’s because the writer assumes that the reader wants to identify with the rich and the macho, not some poor schlubb grubbing in the dirt on a university salary in order to answer some geeky question about 1000 year old corn plants. This is exactly wrong, and I suspect this error is why archaeology mysteries rarely sell very well (except for Tom Clancy whom I cannot stand); it’s not the gold and the treasure that keep the public’s interest. Elizabeth Peters knows this, and doesn’t bother with the archaeology at all, really. She just tells a whopping good story, paying absolutely no attention to believability. I guess she figures if you are going to spin one, you might as well go all the way. And it works for her because she is imaginative and writes well and has a sense of humor.
People, and not just Americans but people in most cultures, get a feeling of magic from making a direct connection with a past that only archaeology can provide. Three years ago, I discovered the tomb of an ancient Maya king. When we opened it up the smell of 2000-year-old perfume wafted out and delighted my crew and me for about 2 hours. Perhaps delight is the wrong word – it gave us goose bumps. The king had been buried wearing his finest jewelry, including hematite mirror earrings, which were broken and came out in tiny pieces. When we cleaned them they were perfect tiny mirrors and as I looked into them and saw my own eyes reflected I realized that the last human visage reflected in these mirrors had been an ancient Maya priest. It took my breath away, and as my students lined up to peer at themselves in these tiny windows, I could see they were affected in the same way.
The perfume was made from tree sap that oozes out all over the site today and I can buy unbroken hematite earrings in the drugstore in Indiana for $2.95. People who write archaeology mysteries do not understand this, and try to pander to the public with the wrong pitch. Wrong not just because they don’t get what it is that people are really interested in, but wrong also because they encourage looting and the disrespect of living people who are connected to the archaeological past either as descendants or as local residents. I know archaeologists are supposed to hate Indiana Jones because he glamorizes an old kind of archaeology that was really looting, but much worse than that, his attitudes toward local people are horribly racist. And of course as a female archaeologist, who has been turned down for funding and opportunities more than once because of gender prejudice, I find the sexism of these films depressing. Don’t write this off as sour grapes, the statistics on women in archaeology are an embarrassment; the playing field is not just un-level, it is practically vertical (Zeder 1998).
So stories about successful treasure hunters or about macho heroes who get the gold and get the girl, leaving participles and plots dangling and stratigraphy and sentences mangled in their wake do not keep me entertained. Some of the macho stuff I can take, if it is beautifully written, like Chandler, or deeply romantic, like MacDonald, but only a little at a time. You have to be pretty tough and pretty romantic to do what I do for a living.
There is another type of mystery that I SHOULD like, but I don’t. These are the mysteries that take themselves so seriously that they exude depression. Siberian Light is beautifully written, for example, but it is such an accurate portrayal of so hopeless a situation that it provides no escape. Season of the Moon by Paul Mann is also well written (not so witty), but it is so depressing I couldn’t get past the third chapter. Both of these are so politically correct that I found myself feeling guilty for not wanting to read them. Brutality, whether of the flesh or of the spirit, does not appeal. As an anthropologist, this is also part of the world of my work. I do not deny its existence, but in my own way, I work to change it. The last thing I need is to spend my free time with intellectual pornography, with its voyeuristic focus on imaginary suffering. I work too close to the real thing to find it titillating.
Which is all to say that Eric Gibson’s book does everything right. No the plot isn’t exactly perfect, but I’ve read plenty of Edgar winners that are not nearly as good. The characters are intelligent and interesting. The plot is possible and complex. The dialog is actually speakable and the scenes are from real places accurately portrayed. The bad guys are very real – they are modeled after the bad guys that are every archaeologist’s real nemesis in professional life. These are the evil doers who will sacrifice anything for a trinket or a chance to get rich – or famous. I have met them and I know the names of several. Most of them think they have every right to do what they do. After all, what are a few laws, or even a few lives, where “art” is at stake.
At last! A guilt-free archaeology mystery! It’s just pure fun; and captures some of the real flavor of the incredible adventure that archaeology really is without sacrificing all realism or humor or glamorizing. Gibson does not resort to cheap sexism or stereotyped (well not TOO stereotyped) bad guys to give his readers a walloping good time. This is a mystery for the end of the 90′s – realism and surrealism, science and magic, history and myth in a seamless adventure. I have already recommended it to all my colleagues, and they are a critical bunch! I just hope it comes out before Harrison Ford gets too old to play a real archaeologist. I can’t wait for the next one.
Karen Anne Pyburn
Professor of Anthropology
Indiana University
Bloomington, Indiana
*****
Gibson’s novel is a “tour de force”; a tour of the jungles and mysteries of academia and Central America, that forces the reader to pay attention. I read it all at once, over the course of a weekend. It is that good. The author has written a book that is a labyrinth from which there is no escape. His knowledge of Anthropology, Archaeology, and the past and present cultures of Central America, leverage a tale of betrayal, murder, conspiracy, revolution and liberation that resembles no other book that I am aware of. I think it is a stunning first novel, and I eagerly await the sequel.
John Donahue
Chair, Dept. of Anthropology
Trinity University
*****
Nine Lords of the Night is an intellectual and emotional treat. One uncovers the layers of the mystery and the details and nuances of the plot, much as an archaeologist uncovers a site. The characters became real and I found myself caring deeply about them. The pacing is outstanding and the undercurrent of suspense makes it a hard book to put down. The author explores the current political realities of Central America and simultaneously weaves into it the region’s ancient past while delighting the reader with a powerful post-modern “who done it.” There really is no other novel quite like it.
Sherrill Marshall, MSN
Lecturer
Old Dominion University
Norfolk, Virginia
*****
Exciting, interesting, a good read for the true mystery lover! The next John Grisham? Written in the tradition of J. A. Jance, learning (about Maya civilization and archaeology) served up in a good thriller. Those in academia will enjoy the inside look at teaching and tenure. A map would be helpful for those of us who are geographically challenged. I waited a long time to read the ending of this book and I was not disappointed. The movie ought to be another “Romancing the Stone” or “Indiana Jones.” When is the next book coming out?
Professor Brenda S. Nichols
Chair
School of Nursing
Old Dominion University
Norfolk, Virginia
*****
E.C. Gibson’s Nine Lords of the Night is a lengthy (500+ pages) archaeology thriller that follows the adventures of several young Harvard doctoral students through a thicket of intrigue that takes one or more of them from the ivy-covered environs of Harvard to Florida to Belize, Guatemala and Chiapas State in Mexico. Against a background of the Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas in 1993 and 1994, the young archaeologists face a brutal band of antiquities smugglers whose tentacles stretch back to the hallowed ground of Harvard Yard. He artfully weaves throughout the story the brooding presence of the ancient gods of the Mayan peoples, particularly the Nine Lords of the Night, who rule Xibalba, the Mayan underworld.
Gibson is a Ph.D. anthropologist from Harvard with excavation experience in Central America, France, Polynesia and North America. His technical expertise in archaeology is evident throughout the story, albeit in prose that is sometimes rather wooden. His descriptions of various locales are vivid and true to life, whether it be Cambridge, Massachusetts, or its working class and student affordable sister city, Somerville, or more exotic environs like Belize or archaeological sites like Yaxchilan in Chiapas State or Tikal in Guatemala.
As indicated above, this is an “e-book,” and the first that I’ve purchased or read. The book is published, if that’s the correct term, by Embella Publishing, a “broadband content publishing company delivering private label rich-media content, applications and simulations through a sophisticated Web services platform.” I’m not certain what all (or any) of that means, but I was able to purchase the e-book for $9.99 (charged to my credit card) and I then received instructions on how to access it. One can apparently download the book to a palm pilot, or similar electronic device, but one cannot print it out to hardcopy. I have only a desktop computer so this meant I would not be reading Nine Lords in bed just before going to sleep! Because the story is a good one, reasonably well written and fast-paced, I could keep at it despite the inconvenience (for me) of reading it off a computer screen. From my neo-Luddite perspective, I do not think the printed book (hardcover or paperback) is yet in danger of extinction because of the existence of e-books!
Bill Gresens
Chair
Mississippi Valley Archaeology Center
at the University of Wisconsin – La Crosse
