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Ravenstone

by Deborah Cannon

294 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #07-1961; ISBN 1-4251-4602-3; US$20.40, C$20.40, EUR13.94, £10.53

A red-blooded heroic rescue that spans Canada's Queen Charlotte Islands to the South Pacific kingdom of Tonga where a psychotic relic hunter holds an archaeologist's daughter hostage.

About the Book

Jake Lalonde, a brilliant young archaeologist and a staunch protector of ancient sites, follows his fiancée, Angeline, to the South Pacific kingdom of Tonga to investigate a rare archaeological relic-the Ravenstone. The cunning black bird etched on this stone artifact is a dominant figure in British Columbia's native Haida mythology. Jake is half-Haida and the raven is his family's crest. His hope in visiting Tonga is to discover how a North Pacific Haida art symbol ended up on a stone of execution half a world away on a sunbaked tropical island where no ravens have ever existed. The symbol carved on this stone is indistinguishable from an image engraved into a granite cliff on British Columbia's Queen Charlotte Islands. A beguiling, mysterious art dealer, who unexpectedly appears in Tonga at the same time that Jake and Angeline arrive, holds the key to the riddle of the identical stones.

Reviews

"Cannon wields information and the reader's attention like filmaker M. Night Shyamalan!"

Ravenstone is Deborah Cannon's third installment in the saga of Jake Lalonde, an archeologist in search of his Haida heritage. Jake is drawn to Tonga in the South Pacific, where a rock carving is discovered just like the one found in Lyell Island off the coast of British Columbia. The puzzle that people of his Haida heritage seemed to have traveled as far away as the Polynesian island isn't the only thing Jake needs to ponder, for an old enemy has emerged to take revenge on Jake and take his fiancee, Angeline Lisbon. This third book pits Jake against P. Clifford Radisson, the ruthless developer he clashed with in the first book, who tried to turn Jake's archeological sites into a theme park. Together with Angeline Lisbon, graduate student introduced in the first book who is now the love of his life, Jake tries to thwart Radisson's revenge.

The usual worries about being able to understand a third installment when I knew nothing of the first two did cross my mind when I picked up Ravenstone, but Deborah Cannon managed to ease me into the story quite smoothly. This suspense-filled tale has enough energy to stand well enough alone without feeding off the previous two. Cannon's characters are what partly fuels the energy of this tale: they are boldly fashioned, they stand out, and the reader's eye will track them when they stir. This is easy enough to see in Clifford Radisson, who truly seems near soul-less; or Jake, who is intense and impetuous. But even a quieter character like the Tongan native Tolani (who happens to be my favorite), who has a quiet strength and a deep devotion to those he loves, and an almost zen-like practical wisdom granted him by island life, is a fascinating character to track as he does his part to help the tale unfold.

Deborah Cannon also has a knack for fostering a certain kind of reader tension that keeps me turning the pages as fast as I can read them. She distributes the key bits of knowledge about Radisson's sordid plan across the different characters, and then keeps them unable to share their part of the climactic finale until pretty much the end. As a reader, the frustration of seeing the characters thwarted from sharing their bit of the "big picture" due to geography, circumstance, or personal hesitation builds as much tension as any thriller or whodunit mystery where the information is not known. The reader does see it all, but is thrown into a frenzy of reading on and on, in the hopes that the characters manage to piece together the big picture before it's too late. In this Cannon wields information and the reader's attention like M. Night Shyamalan does in his movies. Whereas Shyamalan uses the silence of the unknown to grip the audience, doling information out as he sees fit, this author uses the white noise of all pieces of the puzzle floating around in full view, keeping the reader in tenterhooks as they watch raptly, waiting for the pieces to click into place. That was how Cannon held me captive till her tale completely unfurled and the puzzle was complete – I stayed a captive gladly and thank her for a well done third installment on this three-book tale.

Celina Cuadro
bookideas.com (Arlington, Virginia)

About the Author

Deborah Cannon was born in Vancouver, British Columbia. She is the author of four short stories and three novels and she has contributed articles on writing to the Canadian Writer's Guide and the professional writer's web sites, absolutewrite.com and suite101.com. She is author of the archaeological manual, Marine Fish Osteology: A Manual for Archaeologists. Most recently, her anthropological thriller The Raven's Pool was cited in a scholarly study, Archaeology is a Brand! The Meaning of Archaeology in Contemporary Popular Culture(Holtorf 2007) as part of a fast growing fiction genre depicting archaeologists not as treasure hunters like Indiana Jones and Lara Croft but as protectors of ancient sites. Her second novel, White Raven was a 2007 Adult Summer Reading Club pick at the Hamilton Public Library. Ravenstone is the third book in the series.

Excerpts