The Stone Testament
by Celia Rees
Celia Rees is well known for her spooky teen horror and action-packed historical novels, as well as more recent novels with a contempory setting. In The Stone Testament she has blended all these elements into a complex and twisting narrative that stretches from a drowned world and a mysterious elder culture to the shores of a twenty-first century threatened by an ancient danger.
Beautiful Zillah with her tawny hair and aquamarine eyes is the sole survivor of a mass suicide by one Chapter of The Children of the Sixth Dawn. Orphan Adam is an unwilling Temple novice, brought up as a charity case by the Order. When their paths cross in hospital neither knows the ties that link them or the dangers they share. As Zillah escapes on to the streets of London and Adam is taken up by a relation he never knew he had, they are both drawn further into the ancient secrets of a people older than the Mayans who possessed artifacts of great power, the greatest of which is a crystal skull.
With the help of streetwise Christophe and his Caribbean grandmother Mamma Celestine, the teenagers begin to piece the puzzle together. But they have little time left. The events recounted in the Stone Testament, a manuscript dating from the early 1900s, are still being played out today. Buller Wesson - an antagonist from the narrated history - is on the teenagers' trail, seeking to use them in his plans to bring about the end of the world.
All this is set up for the beginning of a time travel adventure with a twist, as the teenagers are projected back into the past to inhabit the bodies of analogue selves. To save the future they must untangle the mysteries of the elder time.
This is a rich and multi-faceted narrative with diary segments playing an important key to the plot. There's a lot going on here and with so many characters in the distant past, more recent past and present, unconfident readers may feel daunted by the volume of information. It's by no means as easy or accessible a read as Rees' Pirates or Witch Child and the plot turns upon a heavy mystical element that's very different from the cheap and cheerful magic systems of most teen fantasy.
That said, a thoughtful reader with a hunger for depth and resonance will devour this book and will find their mind opened to a wealth of other rich fantasy through it. It reminded me of C. S. Lewis' Cosmic Trilogy, initially because of the similarity of the names Wesson and Weston, but increasingly because of the similar mood of creeping evil and the sense both narratives give of larger and more numinous universe than is usually encountered in the sci-fi/fantasy genre.
A difficult book with some tough challenges for the reader, but ultimately rewarding and probably the sort of book that needs to be read more than once to comprehend the depth of work Rees has put into it.