At the end of a track, on the outskirts of an ordinary coastal town, lies a dilapidated house. Once, a group of amateur ghost hunters spent the night there. Two of them don`t like to speak about the experience. The third can`t talk around it. He went into the basement, you see, and later he screamed so hard and so long he tore his vocal cords.
Now, a group of teenagers have decided to hang out in the old haunted house. Dismissing the fears of the others, their leader Jezza goes down into the basement_ and comes back up with a children`s book, full of strange and colourful tales of a playing-card world, a fairytale world, full of Jacks, Queens and Kings, unicorns and wolves.
But the book 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 town are swept up by its wonderful 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 write a book for young adults then I would believe it would be something very much like Dancing Jax. Although in an interview that Robin Jarvis has done for The Book Zone (coming on Friday) he suggests that hedoesn'tsee himself as a horror author, this phrase is as scary as anything the great Power has published. Reading it certainly made me see the like as I did when I first read 'Salem's Lot, which was very anxious indeed. I don't scare easily these days, and I totally love horror films, but both of these stories had me looking on edge pretty much from the 1st chapter.I have now been sitting staring at my shield for an hour trying to get up with words that identify this book. The blurb at the top of this post says a lot about the plot, and I feel that saying much more could not so much create spoilers, but in some way diminish reading enjoyment anyway. I say this is because the plot seems unique to me; I certainly don't think that I have come across anything similar in YA literature before. The origin of the study suggests a fairly standard horror story of ghostly/demonic possession, but Robin Jarvis very quickly dispels any thoughts that his story will be as true as this. And I'm still struggling to go out the best way to distinguish it. To make it a horror story would, I feel, do it an injustice as it is so much more than that. Similarly, to call it fantasy does not feel right. It is a brilliant hybrid of all the best 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 panel 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 very evil man - the supposedly long missing and presumed dead Austerly Fellows. This book has the power 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 maker and master, and each new follower has a special reference to play, based upon a deck of playing cards. Therefore, we admit the Jack of Diamonds, the Jill of Clubs, the Power of Spades as main characters in this fantasy world, and the lower numbers become serfs with menial tasks. And they genuinely all see that this world exists, thanks to the evil magic that permeates from the book, corrupting all who read or see its story.I see 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 word into the men of a few and this very quickly snowballs, with 'addict' after 'addict' falling under the part of the evil book. And before too long, so are the adults. Maybe I'm just being too sensitive as I run a big slice of my life encouraging young people to read, and yet in Dancing Jax it is this very process that becomes their downfall. How distressing is that? And possibly slightly unnerving is the fact that Robin Jarvis's Dancing Jax is about as addictive as its fictional namesake - I just did not want to stop reading it and found myself reading well into the night, and then rushing home very tired from bring the next day to get it finished off.Going back to my earlier statement that this work is similar to that ofStephenKing, I think I feel 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 people of this part of Felixstowe: their hopes and fears, the way they interact with each other on a daily basis, the way they share with tragedy. In doing so we 'see' a huge chain of fibre and so we really do not know who is going to be the hero of the story who eventually thwarts the plans of the villain. Just as I view it would be one particular case the piece would twist, they would fall foul of the book's magic and get another one of the ever growing host of Ismus devotees. This likewise means that just 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 but the same thoughts as I read 'Salem's Lot, as first one member of the town became and vampire, and so another, and another, although because of the way that book opens we ever know that Ben Mears is likely to be a survivor.As I was reading Dancing Jax I couldn't help but feel that at times Robin Jarvis was commenting on how our society has dissipated over the last few decades. These thoughts were confirmed by one of my favourite passages in the book, which comes towards the end as The Ismus arrogantly justifies the sensation of the book and his actions by preaching:"There are no children in this earth any more. You do and binding them as mini-adults. You let little girls play with dolls that look like Berlin prostitutes. The morals and hypocrisy I used to meet so stomach-churning no longer exists. You foist on to your new people role models whose brains are never as active as their underwear, and whose talents and achievements extend only as far as the bedroom door and the power to blurt every level of what happens behind it. You experience your precious offspring access to a lightning-fast network of degeneracy and danger. You accept them in computer games far more vehement than the most 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 respect and certainly no innocence left. To be important at thirteen is no longer an everlasting shame, merely a career choice."Perhaps The Ismus is correct, and Dancing Jacks is the only reply to today's social problems? Scary thought.Confession time: I have never have any of Robin Jarvis's Deptford books. I know I may be missing 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 book 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 certainly not a book for younger readers, who may be put off by its 535 pages anyway, but I know 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 head 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 bigger than the one at the end of Dancing Jax.Dancing Jax is officially released in the UK tomorrow, and my interview 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 likewise a signed finished copy with it's stunning book cover design. 
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