At the end of a track, on the outskirts of an ordinary coastal town, lies a derelict house. Once, a grouping of amateur ghost hunters spent the dark there. Two of them don`t care to speak about the experience. The third can`t talk about it. He went into the basement, you see, and after he screamed so strong and so long he tore his vocal cords.
Now, a grouping of teenagers have decided to flow out in the old haunted house. Dismissing the fears of the others, their leader Jezza goes down into the cellar_ and comes back up with a children`s book, full of foreign and colourful tales of a playing-card world, a fairytale world, full of Jacks, Queens and Kings, unicorns and wolves.
But the volume is no fairytale. Written by Austerly Fellows, a mysterious turn-of-the-century occultist, it just might be the gateway to something terrifying_and awfully final. As the children and teenagers of the township are swept up by its tremendous power, swept into its seductive world, something has begun that could usher in sin on earth. Soon, the only people standing in its way are a new boy with a sci-fi obsession, and his dad - an unassuming maths teacher called Martin_
If Stephen King were to save a word for young adults then I would think it would be something very much like Dancing Jax. Although in an audience that Robin Jarvis has done for The Book Zone (coming on Friday) he suggests that hedoesn'tsee himself as a horror author, this word is as scary as anything the dandy Power has published. Reading it sure made me look the same as I did when I first read 'Salem's Lot, which was really anxious indeed. I don't scare easily these days, and I totally love horror films, but both of these stories had me look on edge pretty much from the 1st chapter.I bear now been sitting staring at my shield for an hour trying to get up with language that distinguish this book. The blurb at the top of this post says a lot near the plot, and I find that saying much more could not so much create spoilers, but in some way diminish reading enjoyment anyway. I suppose this is because the game seems unique to me; I sure don't think that I have come across anything similar in YA literature before. The source of the report suggests a fair standard horror story of ghostly/demonic possession, but Robin Jarvis very quickly dispels any thoughts that his report will be as straight as this. And I'm still struggling to go out the better way to identify it. To name it a horror story would, I feel, do it an injustice as it is so much more than that. Similarly, to visit it fantasy does not look right. It is a brilliant hybrid of all the better elements of horror, fantasy, fairy tales, folk lore and even social commentary, and somehow Robin Jarvis has blended all of these ingredients as if he were a master chef cooking a complete five course meal for a jury of the world's most hard-to-please food critics.The story revolves around a book, the (almost) titular Dancing Jacks; a word created by a really evil man - the supposedly long missing and presumed dead Austerly Fellows. This book has the ability to 'convert' anybody who reads it into a fan of The Ismus, but not in the brainwashed cult way that we see occasionally in the media today. These converts start to believe in another world, where The Ismus is divine and master, and each new follower has a particular character to play, based upon a floor of playing cards. Therefore, we accept the Jack of Diamonds, the Jill of Clubs, the King of Spades as principal characters in this fantasy world, and the lower numbers become serfs with menial tasks. And they genuinely all consider that this world exists, thanks to the malevolent magic that permeates from the book, corrupting all who understand or see its story.I consider the element I found most disturbing is that the foremost people who are targeted by The Ismus are the children of the secondary school on the fringes of Felixstowe. Like a clever drug dealer, The Ismus gets the bible into the men of a few and this very quickly snowballs, with 'addict' after 'addict' falling below the piece of the evil book. And before too long, so are the adults. Maybe I'm just being too sensitive as I pass a big piece of my life encouraging young people to read, and yet in Dancing Jax it is this very action that becomes their downfall. How distressing is that? And possibly slightly unnerving is the fact that Robin Jarvis's Dancing Jax is almost as addictive as its fictional namesake - I only did not need to finish reading it and establish myself reading well into the night, and then hurry home very tired from bring the following day to get it finished off.Going back to my earlier statement that this process is like to that ofStephenKing, I suppose I find this way because of the way in which Robin Jarvis builds his story. Like King, he focuses on the minutiae of the day-to-day lives of the masses of this portion of Felixstowe: their hopes and fears, the way they interact with each other on a casual basis, the way they deal with tragedy. In doing so we 'see' a vast range of fiber and so we actually do not live who is passing to be the champion of the story who eventually thwarts the plans of the villain. Just as I thought it would be one special case the patch would twist, they would fall foul of the book's magic and get another one of the ever growing host of Ismus devotees. This also means that only as you get atatched to and start rooting for a character your hopes are violently dashed and your character allegiance has to shift. I remember thinking just the same thoughts as I read 'Salem's Lot, as first one extremity of the township became and vampire, and so another, and another, although because of the way that book opens we ever recognize that Ben Mears is probably to be a survivor.As I was reading Dancing Jax I couldn't help but find that at times Robin Jarvis was commenting on how our company has dissipated over the final few decades. These thoughts were confirmed by one of my favorite passages in the book, which comes towards the end as The Ismus arrogantly justifies the wizard of the word and his actions by preaching:"There are no children in this world any more. You do and cover them as mini-adults. You let little girls play with dolls that seem like Berlin prostitutes. The morals and hypocrisy I used to receive so stomach-churning no longer exists. You foist on to your new people role models whose brains are never as dynamic as their underwear, and whose talents and achievements extend only as far as the chamber door and the ability to blurt every point of what happens behind it. You have your precious offspring access to a lightning-fast network of degeneracy and danger. You swallow them in computer games far more violent than the almost fierce and dirty war, and target prepubescents with inappropriate music and imagery - giving them a lexicon that would have revolted sailors back in my day. There are not stigmas, no taboos, no boundaries, no value and surely no innocence left. To be significant at thirteen is no longer an everlasting shame, merely a career choice."Perhaps The Ismus is correct, and Dancing Jacks is the sole answer to today's social problems? Scary thought.Confession time: I have never take any of Robin Jarvis's Deptford books. I acknowledge I may be lacking out on something fantastic (in fact friends have told me that I definitely am), but as I have stated on here before, anthropomorphic animal characters do absolutely nothing for me. I amthereforeunable to compare his latest offering, Dancing Jax, with any of the books in that series, although I let a notion that this volume may be more in keeping with the chilling themes he explored in the fantabulous Wyrd Museum trilogy, and the most as brilliant Deathscent. It is surely not a record for younger readers, who may be put off by its 535 pages anyway, but I recognize many teen boys and girls who will totally love Dancing Jax. One son of warning though - I hadn't realised that this is the 1st volume in a series (more to be revealed in the question with Robin Jarvis), and as such I was expecting it to get to a natural conclusion. I couldn't have been more wrong - cliffhangers don;t get much larger than the one at the end of Dancing Jax.Dancing Jax is officially released in the UK tomorrow, and my consultation with Robin Jarvis will go live on Friday morning. My thanks go to the generous people at Harper Collins, who not only sent me an early proof of the book, but also a signed finished copy with it's stunning book cover design. 
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