THE GLIMMER OF LIFE

An African boy deploys incredible fighting prowess and a bag of tricks to recover a magic stone belonging to his subterranean tribe in this rousing fantasy.

Jones’ novel imagines a lost tribe called the Ankh Adar that has been living in a Namibian cavern for 200 years after escaping slave traders. Life underground has given the members eerie blue-gray eyes, a heightened sense of smell, and four times the strength and speed of other humans, in part due to their diet of glowing blue grubs that feed on the dung of the giant, man-eating bats that constitute the cave’s main downside. Also sustaining the tribe is the Bensaya stone known as “The Glimmer of Life,” a football-sized diamond whose yellow glow lets them grow produce and has healing properties. Anchoring the narrative is Oye, a put-upon 12-year-old whom the tribe considers a coward because he froze in fright while his father was killed by the bat-king Sidiki. When “palefaces” led by a mercenary named Bellevue steal the Bensaya diamond, superlative lady warrior Mahua sets out to retrieve it, taking Oye and his older brother Uchee along. The trio fight off hyenas as they track Bellevue and his posse, largely by their smell. Oye is separated from Uchee and Mahua, but he trails the stone to a freighter sailing off across the Atlantic. Oye boards ship the ship with the help of dolphins and is befriended by shambolic Cajun sailor Lafayette Boudreaux. Debarking in New Orleans, Oye revels in wonders unknown in the cave, like chewing gum, indoor showers, and nightlife in the French Quarter. Oye intermittently continues the search for the Bensaya, which embroils him in brawls with cops and Bellevue’s henchmen along the way to locating the mastermind Ether, a supermarket tycoon whose ancestors enslaved the Ankh Adar’s legendary hero Dobro.

Jones’ story has a Raiders of the Lost Ark feel, featuring exotic locales and a quest for an ancient Mcguffin. The narrative is powered by pint-sized superhero Oye, an endlessly plucky and resourceful kid who is forever twirling, somersaulting, pole-vaulting, and bashing bad guys with his Jak stick, or resorting to more arcane devices from his leather pouch, which has everything from a blow-gun loaded with tranquilizer darts to “forgetting powder” that wipes opponents’ memories when puffed in their faces. The action scenes are rollicking and inventive, boasting a panoply of unlikely weapons. (“Then like a king cobra snake, the boy leap forward and spit a combination of soap and water into the big man’s eyes. Waters turned and screamed rubbing his burning eyes with both hands.”) Jones’ writing is vivid and evocative, whether describing the sound of hungry glow-bugs (“like bacon frying in a pan full of hot grease”), the unsavoriness of villains (“Ether had the look of an expensive mortician, searching for a cheap corpse”), or the spell of a blues guitarist, whose songs “seemed full of hurt, despair, and problems, but also full of hope and life.” Readers will root for Oye as he treks resolutely through his oddball odyssey.

An entertaining yarn with imaginative make-believe and vigorous prose.