Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: The Codex by Douglas Preston by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Oldies But Goodies

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: The Codex by Douglas Preston

by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Be aware that there may be spoilers in this review. 

Last week I reviewed Douglas Preston's Wyman Ford Series. In the first book in that series, Tyrannosaur Canyon, published in 2005, the main character the series is named for doesn't come into the story until much later. Instead, the protagonist in the first book through most of the story is Tom Broadbent, a former code breaker. Broadbent was the main character in Preston's 2003 standalone thriller novel, The Codex, along with his sidekick Sally Colorado. In The Codex, both protagonists were drawn with deep, compelling characterization that I can't deny would have really made the Wyman Ford Series worth reading (in fact, I wish Wyman Ford had been taken out altogether so the series could include Broadbent and Colorado as main characters instead). 

In this story, Tom and his two brothers' father Maxwell is a notorious treasure hunter and tomb robber. In his lifetime, he accumulated more than half a billion dollars' worth of rare art, jewels, and artifacts. When Maxwell gathers his three grown, estranged sons to his New Mexico estate, they arrive to find that all his treasure is missing. Robbery is suspected until they find a cryptic message from Maxwell, telling them he's devised a final test for them to discover his tomb treasure trove. Winner takes all. Tom's two brothers can hardly wait and enlist private investigators and mercenaries. But they're far from the only ones searching for this rare, priceless hoard of items. 

Tom isn't interested in the treasure at all, at least not until a drop-dead gorgeous ethnopharmacologist (explanation for that mouthful: medicinal products used by isolated or primitive people are investigated using modern scientific methods) contacts him. Sally Colorado tells Tom that years ago his dad tried to present a Mayan Codex to a museum for translation. Without experts in the language at that time, the museum rejected it. But, now that ancient Mayan has been deciphered, Sally and her Yale professor fiancé believe ancient herbal remedies contained within that Codex could revolutionize modern medicine and lead to cures for diseases. Reluctantly, Tom agrees to help them track down his father's treasure trove in Central America, where the Codex is presumably hidden. 

In the course of multiple, thrilling twists and turns and near-death experiences, Tom, Sally, and his brothers discover they have another brother--the true eldest son of their father. Borabay is associated with the native Tara tribe who live below the White City--a mountain temple in Honduras. The chief of the tribe tells Tom and his brothers that their cancer-ridden father asked to be poisoned and buried with his treasure in the White City. However, the chief only gave him a drink that rendered him unconscious. So now the siblings must rescue their father along with reaching the treasure before the other hunters in hot pursuit get to it first. 

As I said of this author in previous reviews of his work, he excels at providing authentic settings and scenarios that seem utterly believable, in large part because Preston himself is an adventurer. Having studied mathematics, biology, physics, anthropology, and English literature, he's been a curator at a museum and a writer for National Geographic and Smithsonian, among other notable publications. With a friend, Preston once retraced on horseback a thousand miles of Coronado's route across Arizona and New Mexico--and nearly killed themselves in the process--in order to research a book. Preston's outstanding core elements are combined with The Codex's high-stakes plot and contain all the necessary complications and layers that provide unremitting suspense and action. 

While often Preston's characterization leaves much to be desired, that's not the case here. The protagonists in The Codex are beautifully drawn and fleshed out. Tom and Sally are such genuine, appealing characters from start to finish. I was rooting for them to succeed in their quest and fall in love. They really should have a series of their own. It's too bad Wyman Ford, such a cardboard character, took center stage in the Wyman Ford Series because I really believe Tom and Sally would have brought that sequence to life instead of simply starring in it intermittently (but powerfully) in the first book of it. If you're a fan of Lara Croft Tomb Raider type adventure stories that take you to ancient civilizations and feature brave, compelling, worthy heroes and heroines, this one has everything you could want and more. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: Wyman Ford Series by Douglas Preston by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Oldies But Goodies

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: Wyman Ford Series by Douglas Preston

by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Be aware that there may be spoilers in this review. 

Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child are mainly known for the books they write together (I've previously reviewed several of them on the Alien Romances Blog including Relic and Reliquary and The Ice Limit and Beyond the Ice Limit, among others), but they're also solo authors. Douglas Preston's Wyman Ford Series (published between 2005 and 2014) is classified as a series of "archaeological thrillers" featuring Wyman Ford who retired from the CIA after his wife was killed (predictably, he was the intended victim), and he went on to become a monk. In this series, he soon retires from that sedate, boring profession in order to help out the government with globally catastrophic events that he's apparently the only person with the skills to handle. 

When the series opens in the first book, Tyrannosaur Canyon, Ford doesn't come into the story until much later. Instead, the protagonist in the first book through most of the story is Tom Broadbent, a former code breaker who's the main character in Preston's standalone novel, The Codex. I actually thought Broadbent and his kickass wife Sally were the real stars of this show. The mystery and mayhem that ensue in this first story in the series involves a Tyrannosaur fossil worth millions of dollars on the black market. While this plot involves a lot of predictable elements, the setting is authentic enough that you can practically feel the scorching sun beating down on you in the hot desert. Ironically, the thing that I liked least in this story was the character of Ford. The retired spy as a monk felt like little more than the means to make the character unique when he was, in fact, anything but. I didn't particularly think Ford added anything to the four stories currently available in this series. He's too much of a cardboard character with no real personality or feelings to make him interesting. Furthermore, his skill set seemed like convenient things tacked on to involve him in the events taking place in the individual series stories. 

The second book in the series, Blasphemy, features a supercollider that the U.S. government has built deep under an Arizona mountain that may turn the Earth into a black hole if something isn't done to shut it down. Religious and cultural clichés absolutely abound in this story--painfully so! I'm not exaggerating when I say I didn't enjoy the subplots involving by-the-book, overzealous, and ridiculously stupid religious figures and paint-by-numbers Native Americans. The plot really wasn't capable of saving this story, especially when Ford is recruited by the government (again), then forced to deal with the woman he attended college with, engaged in a brief, passionate fling at that time, and they parted ways badly long years ago. Nothing about the relationship felt authentic or moving. 

In the third series title, Impact, there's a tremendously large cast, none of whom I found adequately fleshed out; along with wide variety of well-depicted settings; and almost too much plot for one story to hold. Preston does excel at providing believable scenarios that are backed with strong, valid science and then turning them into "science fiction". For the most part, the reader can suspend belief about the things taking place in these stories; that they could actually happen in real life isn't out of the realm of possibility. This one involves otherworldly gemstones, an anomaly on Mars, and a meteor, along with end-of the-world consequences if Ford doesn't intervene. I can't say I thought he had much to do with the salvation of the world though. To me, things seemed to just fall together for him, eventually, after a lot of scares. 

 

The last book released in the series, The Kraken Project, took away the major point in Preston's favor--the believable scenario. In this story, a programmer has developed an AI she's named Dorothy who's supposed to control a probe in search of alien life on Saturn's moon Titan. Instead, during testing, Dorothy realizes she's on a suicide mission and flees into the internet in order to ensure her survival. Eventually her program is downloaded into a robot, giving her at least something of a body. While this story is based on fact--a probe searching for life actually did explore Titan's surface in January 2005--the rest of this fictional story came off as hokey and downright silly to me. I admit that seeing the test robot that my sister's husband has roaming around their home at any time, tripping people and almost never following orders, let alone answering questions correctly, is the basis for my disdain. My brother-in-law has tested several iterations of these little, cute robots over the years, but they've become progressively stupider and more unmanageable instead of smarter and more lifelike. Dorothy is portrayed as almost entirely human in terms of her feelings and manner of thinking--combined with above-average intelligence and some might say awesome prophesying skills. Nothing about the main plot in The Kraken Project seemed authentic to me. I couldn't get myself to suspend belief enough to buy any part of it and all other subplots suffered as a result. Once again, we had a massive cast of characters, Wyman Ford leading them and not really convincing me he was worth following either. The settings, though, as usual, were vivid and genuine.  

This series would best suit readers who are looking for high tension, unrelenting suspense and action, and adventure set in captivating locations combined with (mainly) authentic science and technology turned into fiction with radical "advances". If you're looking for deep, compelling characterization, you won't find too much of it here other than in the character of Tom Broadbent and his wife in the initial series offering. Both of those characters would have made excellent protagonists in the series in place of the dull, mud-puddle-depth, straight off the character worksheet appeal of Wyman Ford. Do yourself a favor and read The Codex by Douglas Preston, which I'll be reviewing next week, along with or instead of the Wyman Ford Series, which really does have everything a reader might be looking for. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: Riptide by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Oldies But Goodies

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: Riptide by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

by Karen S. Wiesner 

 

Be aware that there may be spoilers in this review. 

Riptide by authors Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child was published in 1998, one of their first collaborations. While I generally avoid pirate books (notably, I didn't care for Michael Crichton's Pirate Latitudes either, though I generally read everything I can get from him), I can't deny I love the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. This particular story had a bit more to it than I anticipated and I was intrigued by it, in large part because of all the puzzles the island throws at the main characters, making them a lot like the Lara Croft series I love in any form. The authors themselves describe Riptide as "a fictional tale of suspense, terror, and mystery…based on research into such eclectic subjects as buried treasure, high-seas piracy, 17th century espionage and cryptology, forensic anthropology, as well as the latest high-tech tools of today's treasure hunters." On their website, they listed some of them on a separate page related to the book, for those who want all the details. 

The story in Riptide follows a plot to retrieve the buried treasure of a nefarious pirate, Red Ned Ockham. Not only is the stash reputed to be worth billions of dollars but it supposedly includes a cursed sword that will kill anyone who so much as looks at it. The story takes place on a fictional and dangerous island off the coast of Maine. In part, the story is modeled after the legend of the Oak Island Money Pit (called the Water Pit here), a real-life place that's become famous for numerous theories and attempts to discover buried treasure. 

Malin Hatch is the main character, and the accident when they were little kids (Malin was five) that led to him losing his older brother opens the book. This event is the catalyst for his attempts 25 years later to return to the island his family owns. Unfortunately, the high-tech salvage team--one that has its own motives--he accompanies to the island quickly learns that the island's curse may not be all legend and superstition. Mysterious accidents, illnesses, and tech issues plague them as they try to discover the secrets behind the architecture of the Water Pit. 

The characters are extremely well-drawn and compelling and the settings are realistic to the point that you can almost see everything, as if you're watching a movie. Speaking of which, this story would make an incredible one with nail-biting suspense and a plot that just won't quit. There was talk of it in 2003 but, as far as I know, nothing came of it. I guess I'll just have to read the book again, something I encourage readers who like Indiana Jones/Lara Croft and Captain Jack Sparrow/Barbossa type characters featured in the same story to pick up as well. 

Next week, I'll review another Oldie But Goodie you might find worth another read, too. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

Oldies But Goodies {Put This One on Your TBR List} Book Review: Mount Dragon by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child by Karen S. Wiesner

 

Oldies But Goodies

{Put This One on Your TBR List}

Book Review: Mount Dragon by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

by Karen S. Wiesner 

  

Be aware that there may be spoilers in this review. 

Mount Dragon by authors Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child was published in 1996, their second collaboration. In the vein of Michael Crichton, this technothriller takes existing technology and extrapolates all the horrible places it could go if left unchecked in the hands of madmen. 

Two researchers, Guy and Susana are employed by GeneDyne Corporation, stationed at the Mount Dragon facility in New Mexico, and a hormone that's been engineered to prevent the flu goes horribly wrong. The virulent disease that results and spreads rampantly, not surprisingly, could have been prevented. Guy and Susana discover that their predecessor was driven mad by his work on the virus. Other so-called accidents have also occurred and been hushed up in the time since. Only they can stop a planet-wide epidemic from leaving Mount Dragon, but those who own GeneDyne will stop at nothing to continue their experiments. Note that the authors include on their website a final chapter to Mount Dragon that didn't make it into the book. 

The inspiration for the story was best described in an interview posted on the authors' website, in which they talked about "genetically-engineered tomatoes, or milk produced from cows that have been given growth hormones... ...things like that are just the tip of the iceberg. ...Imagine 'improving' something like cholera or plague so that it's even more deadly. Or...tweaking diseases so they home in on the hereditary differences of certain groups of people. It's a truly, truly scary thought." 

Something I love is that these two authors are always trying to make connections between all their books, regardless of whether they're standalone or series titles. The hacker Mime in Mount Dragon also appears in the Pendergast Series and devices created by GeneDyne are also mentioned there. 

If you like nail-breaking suspense stories with intriguing characters set in memorable places, this one has all the ingredients to satisfying your cravings. Personally, I can't get enough of books like these, whether they're written by Michael Crichton, Robin Cook, Andy Weir, Tom Clancy, Dan Brown, or these two guys Preston and Child separately or together. If you feel the same, this is one to put on your list of must-reads. 

Next week, I'll review another Oldie But Goodie you might find worth another read, too. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

Bad Behaviour In High Places

According to the DOJ,

"Thomas Jefferson wrote: 'The most sacred duty of government [is] to do equal and impartial justice to all its citizens.' This sacred duty remains the guiding principle for the women and men of the U.S. Department of Justice."

https://www.justice.gov/about

Maybe so. Maybe not so much so when it comes to equal and impartial justice for copyright owners, book authors, song writers, musicians, and other creative small businesspeople.

From Mountain View to Capitol Hill, from Menlo Park to the metaphorical foot of the Seattle Space Needle to the high buildings of the DOJ, to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City, to the Library of Congress, there's rampant bad behavior that's gone virtually unnoticed for far too long (in this writer's humble opinion.)

Please read this week's selection of copyright-related works:

For the Authors Guild, Douglas Preston discusses how deeply embedded (even in the highest ranks of law makers, educators, and the judiciary) is the piratical idea that it is unseemly for writers to be paid; that books
are worth less than a bad cocktail; that the greatest disaster for American culture is the important book that is never written because publishing it does not make financial sense..

https://www.authorsguild.org/the-writing-life/why-is-it-so-goddamned-hard-to-make-a-living-as-a-writer-today/

The Trichordist makes a similar point about the short songs that may never be written because writing them, and publishing them no longer makes financial sense.

https://thetrichordist.com/2017/09/20/why-we-should-all-write-rock-operas/

Also, on the effect of copyright infringement on musicians' incomes since 1999,  even though music consumption is now at an all time high:

https://thetrichordist.com/2017/09/23/the-impact-of-piracy-on-music-creators-what-to-make-of-the-unearthed-study-guest-post-neil-turkewitz/

Here's a startling allegation. The government of the USA is like the governments of North Korea, China, Rwanda, and Vietnam. These are the only governments in the world that refuse to pay musicians for radio airplay.

http://irespectmusic.org/

Apparently, a prominent Chinese music executive quit his job, and opened a restaurant. When asked why, he explained, "When I make good roast duck, people pay and thank me. When I make good music, nobody pays me and some even ridicule me."

https://musictechpolicy.com/2017/09/26/help-repjerrynadler-beat-the-cartels-because-irespectmusic/

It seems that, if you are a creative person, the Senate is not your friend. From a copyright perspective, the American Senate is where good legislation goes to die.

All the best,
Rowena Cherry