When was the last time you read a book that got you started with a tattered map scratched out in blood? And imagine if that map led you on a perilous journey where scraps of an ominous legend brought you to a stony vault, which in turn descended to a lost treasure chamber, where presiding over an ancient table loomed a colossal skeletal figure of Death in all his grim glory, brandishing a spear. You may wonder if Indiana Jones conducted you to such a place, but no. This is another world altogether, and it’s far more vibrant, even when it goes to the “Place of Death.” If, by some happy fortune, you’ve read of such a thing in a tropical romance by perhaps Edgar Rice Burroughs or Rafael Sabatini (instead of seeing it in the movies), allow me to raise the stakes on the scene that I maintain has …