James Rollins
Subterranean
Avon Books, 1999
ISBN: 0-380-79264-8
Monika says:
Since Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has written his book about finding a
prehistoric world in a remote spot in South America, similar stories about
"lost worlds" seem to be a fascinating subject for young
authors. James Rollins' lost, or maybe we should better call it a 'hidden'
world, isn't found on a tepui but deep under the Antarctic ice sheet, on
the least investigated continent on earth. It's a closed ecosystem which
has taken a different turn in evolution; it preserves a few archaic
species that died out everywhere else, it has developed into some kind of
parallel world to our own. A team of scientists sets out to explore this
subterranean world without knowing that another group of scientists was
already sent there and never came back.
Subterranean is James Rollins' first novel, and it still has many
weaknesses. Not that the story doesn't have potential, but the
stereotypical characters and the predictable plot made it a rather dull
read. From time to time I also had the impression of watching a bad action
movie. Perhaps it would be possible to make an action-packed film of this
novel, but as a book it didn't really work for me.
The ingredients Rollins uses for his story aren't new: there's the
divorced woman finding a new love on the perilous expedition, the child in
danger of falling into the hands of the evil terrorist, the evil terrorist
originating from a country from which evil terrorists always seem to come,
and to top it all we have a claustrophobic scientist who shouldn't be part
of this kind of expedition at all but who managed to keep her phobia from
those responsible for the operation. The subterranean ecosystem often
seems too fantastic to really work. What I liked about the story was the
way the author used the mythology of the Australian aborigines, but it
couldn't save the book for me. It has too many weaknesses to recommend it
to anyone. |
Any comments? Write us:
Monika
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