The Jumper Chronicles: The Quest for Merlin's Map Review

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(More customer reviews)Readers of Harry Potter will immediately notice the obvious parallels in this book: A young American boy named Charlie turns 12 and learns that he is from a long line of Druids dating back to Merlin himself. With this heritage can come various abilities or super-powers, and also much personal danger. Charlie is whisked away from Massachussetts to a school in a Scottish castle that reminds us of Hogwarts, where he discovers his own special ability. In addition, the Oracle at the school promises an additional ability to the student or students who can find the sword Excalibur, which is hidden somewhere on the school grounds. Thus begins a school contest that soon develops into a serious -- and dangerous -- quest to find the Sword before it falls into the hands of the evil Vanari, who want to use Merlin's secrets to rule the world. In the process, Charlie also finds out why his father disappeared when he was only two, and comes to terms with his feelings of abandonment.
What is original here - and different from the Potter books - is the idea that individuals in this Druidic line inherit various innate powers such as invisibility, time travel, teleportation, psychokinesis, mind control, etc. and that these cannot be learned. What you get is what you get, and you must learn to work with that. The ending does a very good job of setting up a team of young heros who can work well together and will be able to "jump" into various time periods as they search for the lost power-crystals that Merlin hid in various times and places. Hence the series title, "The Jumper Chronicles."
As a coming-of-age quest novel, this wasn't bad. I found myself engaged in the story and could identify with the characters, even though I'm not very familiar with the Norse mythology upon which it is based. (Did the Norse gods leave Earth to fight a galactic war and put the Druids in charge of protecting humanity while they were gone? Or did the author make all this up? I'm clueless. But I do know that having Moses be a descendant of Merlin REALLY stretched it for me, since, as far as I know, there is no geneologcal connection between Jews and Druids, unless you go back to Adam and Eve. But OK, I'll call it poetic license and figure that this story is happening in some parallel universe and not the one I know from Jewish history.)
Now for the nitpicks: As other reviewers here pointed out, this book badly needed a better proofreader. There are many places where the spell checker just was not good enough (such as "form" instead of "from," both of which are real words the checker would not catch). Plus there are a lot of punctuation errors, especially with quotation marks, where, if "he said" is inserted into the middle of a remark, there is no second opening quotation mark where the words from the same person continue. I do realize that a lot of small publishers rely on authors to do their own proofing nowadays. But this is all the more reason to have somebody else -- even the family's best speller will do -- read it through before it goes to press. And for heaven sakes, please JUSTIFY the text! The ragged edges in this book were ANNOYING and very unprofessional-looking!
Another thing that annoyed me was the author's constant use of school lectures to fill in the historical details. As Orson Scott Card pointed out in his book How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy, the absolute WORST way to get this kind of info across is to have some scientist or professor stand up there giving a lecture. Sure, you see this in old sci-fi movies, but there are much better ways in modern literature, such as finding an old manuscript, reading it for themselves in a book, questioning another character (which they did do to some extent with the werecat), letting the reader into somebody's thoughts, or even a vision or dream. But it is just too much coincidence to have every school lesson also be a major clue.
But in spite of all these nitpicks, I'm still giving it four stars, because I enjoyed the story. Hopefully, as Charlie and friends pursue more quests in the series, the writing will also improve.


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"Hi, my name is Charlie Burrows. I am twelve years old and am currently running for my life, I really don't even have time to talk to you, so I need to make it brief. Eight months ago I discovered that I was a descendant of the ancient Druids of England. Big deal right? That's what I thought too until my best friend (also a descendant) Bailey stared to be able to hurl huge boulders in the air using her mind, and I was able to jump into alternative dimensions. Ya...we have x-men like abilities that our parents never told us about! Thanks so much mom. You would think they could have at least been honest with us when we asked them to check for monsters under the bed. 'Yes dear, that is just an escaped troll from the fourth kingdom, animal control is on their way." To be fair my father who disappeared when I was two is the one who should have told me, but like I said he disappeared. So I was transported, well kidnapped really to this huge castle in Scotland where they train freaks like me to be part of the Order...which is too hard to explain right now, because I have the entire Vanari (Bad guys) army trying to find me before I can decode this ancient map that Merlin (my great great...really great grandfather, left behind. So to cap it off, it has been a rough year of dealing with my new abilities, trying to pass algebra, finding a father I never remember meeting and trying to keep humanity alive. Ok that splintering wood sound is the front door of the castle, I have to run. If you want to learn more about me, than read this book, but you're probably better off not knowing, because I have not had a solid night sleep since I learned that monsters under the bed are actually real."

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