15 January, 2002: True Jaguar
You can't swing a cat in the fantasy section of your local bookstore without hitting a dozen horrible books in which Celtic mythology intersects with the workaday world. I read lots of these up until eighth grade or so, when I realized just how bad most of them were. Perhaps it's just because I'm not looking, but Warren Norwood's True Jaguar is one of only two modern fantasies I've read to draw on Mayan mythology. (The other is Lewis Shiner's Deserted Cities of the Heart.) Jesus Martinez O'Hara is a Mexican-Irish computer programmer kidnapped by a Guatemalan shaman. O'Hara is descended from the heroes of the Popol Vuh, and only he and his companions can descend to the underworld to challenge the Lords of the Dead to a game to decide the fate of the world. This is a slight book, but enjoyable -- half the fun is from how odd the Quiche myths seem, and half is from the idea of modern, foul-mouthed Lords of Xibalba, who play basketball and hire Italian mercenaries. The juxtapositions seem much more incongruous and much less twee in True Jaguar than in those Celtic books, and I'm not sure if it's Norwood's skills or the refreshingly un-Irish setting.