Embers a review

Edit: all done now.

The Clue In the Embers review

This is not a bad book at all. If you like the Maya and want to see the boys travel to Guatemala in search of a lost temple complex, ala Indiana Jones then this is going to be one for you.

Tony Prito, has inherited a stack of curios from his antique dealer uncle, Roberto. This is not limited to, a bunch of swords, some shrunken heads, and a full sized skeleton.  Also hidden away with some of the other curios,  medals that make a map to the hidden temple of Texichapi. Thanks to some serious hassle from the mysterious Valez and a patriotic society, all clues lead to Guatemala.

While there the boys get to locate the missing temple, and Tony, who has his case go missing at the airport, has to drag up as an Indian shaman. They make a friend of a tribal chief called Tecum-Uman and when Texichapi is located there is a big showdown in the temple before being given a heroes welcome.

It's not bad and at times quite good. There are a few problems here, mainly its to do with the Maya and Tecum Uman. The treasure has quite a lot of gold artifacts, which is nice, but nary any mention of Jade pieces which is what all Maya kings and queens really prized above all else. 

Tecum Uman and his tribe, the Kulkuls do not seem to exist, Tecum himself is a folk hero and probable last ruler of the K'iche Maya, his tribe, though, does not seem to appear amongst the many tribes of Maya Indian peoples. Ladinos, however are widespread and are simply a mix of Maya peoples and later Spanish invaders.

Texichapi itself seems to refer to Tecum Uman, and not an actual place. would like to see how this breaks down in actual Mayan, or if the words exist. Anyway I guess its one of those long forgotten satellite kingdoms in Guatemala, rather than a big centre like Tikal.

The biggest red flag here is not that its super racist or anything (it's not,) or that one of the criminals is disguised as a woman, its that they call them Aztec, which as a people never left Mexico whereas the Maya reached down as far as Honduras and Belize.

The UK text has a few omissions, the boys sorting out the curios when home from the train, and Tony cooking spaghetti, along with a few bits toward the end at Texichapi, but mostly it keeps pretty faithful to the text, with some anglicizing of the text. 

The US rewrite is quite obviously based on the original, with a bit cut out to drop the page count. You lose a few bits and pieces, such as Jorge Almeida speeding, and the arrowhead not being in the campfire bomb at the Theme park. You also get a few bits and pieces added back from the original text, along with a lot of minor edits and not so minor edits as whole chapters are merged together in some cases.

Anyway, its up here and here and here for all three versions.