Product Description

The Cardinal is the City. He knows everything that happens there, between sewer and skyscraper top, from east to West. They are joined at the soul. When the the young gangster Capac Raimi arrives in the City he has great hopes of carving out a life of criminal greatness, afterall there is always room for one more gangster. He little suspects that his past present and future are tied to the Cardinal. And he is a jealous master. AYUAMARCA brings together an alternate present and ancient Aztec mysteries in a novel of endless ambition. It is an astonsihing fiction debut.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #116021 in Books
• Published on: 1999-02-11
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
This is the author's first novel and it's a very strange one. Brash young Capac Raimi, a man with no past, comes to join his uncle's gangster organisation in a big, unnamed city. (Though telling a complete story, the book's billed as "The City: Book 1".) Very soon he's sucked into the empire of The Cardinal, the top crime lord who dominates the city and, it seems, may be looking for a young heir ... Jolts, surprises and dizzying gear changes follow: Ayuamarca offers not just unexpected twists but unexpected kinds of twist. Capac encounters love (or at any rate sex) at first sight, an unstoppable assassin, puzzling advisers, blind men with a strange vision and an aging woman who has the perfect face of a teenager. People on the mysterious Ayuamarca List--which includes Capac's name--tend to vanish from life, from official records and hidden files, even from others' memories. The Cardinal, by turns capricious, violent, charming, gross and deadly, has a fantastic secret rooted in the long-ago magic of the Incas. Before Capac is allowed to learn this, he must make various terrible discoveries about himself and those close to him, including his own lady-love. Violent, black and startlingly original. --David Langford

About the Author
SALES POINTS * Prodigiously talented young author. * Perfect for Clive Barker and Mike Marshal Smith readership. * Author has secured deal for an extensive series of children's books with major UK publisher.

Customer Reviews

NICE ONE!
I love books which polarize reader opinions. Let's face it: most stuff these days is either pleasingly good or painfully bad, but rarely memorable. Give me an oddity which can split the public clean down the middle any day! That's why I bought AYUAMARCA, after reading the conflicting views on this very page. It took me a while to get into - I found the prologue very confusing, although it made perfect sense by the end of the book - but after the first few chapters i was hooked. I can see why it's not everyone's cup of tea: O'Shaughnessy attempts that most difficult of tasks, both telling a gripping story and trying to write "literature". There are few of the safe, cliched situations of most fantasy novels: this book assumes readers have a brain and aren't afraid to use it. It doesn't play according to formula, with characters acting the way you might expect or winding up where you may have anticipated. But for those prepared to run with O'Shaughnessy's ideas and free their minds, it should provide lots to think about. The mix of genres is perhaps overly ambitious - I tried to categorize it and simply couldn't; not could i explain to my friends exactly what sort of a book it was: i just told them to buy it and see - but isn't it nice to see a little ambition every now and again? I say give this fresh, forward-thinking book a chance: if O'Shaughnessy's follow ups show improvement (and at 24, he has all the time in the world to fine-shape his act) he could well be one of the best fantasy-based writers of the next ten or twenty years. And i bet his books will still be polarizing readers even then ...

DEBUT GOLD!!!
As someone who reads on average two books a week I try to give a novel by a new or upcoming writer a go once a month or so. Most are fairly naff. A notable exception is Ayuamarca, one of the best debut novels I've read in a long time. Set in a nameless city built by a mysterious Incan tribe, it revolves around a young gangster who is about to embark on the adventure of a lifetime. A strange concoction, moving between genres in a way hardly any first-time books do, it moves at a mesmerising pace, sucking the reader further into the twisting world of The Cardinal (the city's kingpin) with every passing chapter, building to a fantastic, reality-exploding conclusion. The book has some weak points - it could have been a bit tighter in places - but as debuts go it's extraordinary, ambitious and unafraid to break new ground. I'll definitely be looking up this guy's next one!!

First Book From an Excellent Author
This is the first book by my favorite author Darren O'Shaughnessy. Although the name may seem wierd and the cover doesn't look too apealing, this is a very good book for an authors first. Unlike most books this book keeps you guessing and through the many twists and turns you will be wanting more.

You may also have read other books by this author. Under the name Darren Shan, he has written 12 books in the Saga of Darren Shan and the 2nd book in his Demonata series is about to come out.

This is the first book of three:
1.) Ayuamarca: Procession of the dead
2.) Hell's Horizon
3.) City of the Snakes (Unpublished)

The main character of this story is named Capac Raimi and he comes to the "city" to become a gangster. Him and his uncle Theo try to get a foothold in the city where the Cardianl reigns over all, but they are stopped short. Shortly after they begin uncle Theo is gunned down and for some reason Capac is spared.

Find out what happens in this very good hard to find book. Only one printing was produced and copies are becoming scarce.