Indiana Jones and the army of the dead!!
Right so, since I seem to be the only one lucky enough to get this I may as well do my review.
Be warned, spoilers ahead
Right. Expectations.
I expected various things from this novel, I wanted to know why Indy had decided to fight in WWII, I wanted to know what this involved, how it had changed his life. I wanted to know who the hell Mac was. I wanted some reference to the fact that he had already been a spy in the first world war.
I got none of these things.
As its illegal after Young Indy to show Indy doing anything other then chasing after an artefact, like in the movies, we see nothing of the war. Indy is apparantly on leave. The war is barely mentioned at all. We learn nothing of Indy's feelings about it, or why he signed up, or how it affects his lecturing duties. Of Mac we learn relatively little, and nothing substantial whatsoever, hes just sorta there. As for Young Indy, I'm convinced Steve Perry is completely ignorant of its existence. Which is really annoying as, in most conversations Indy has Perry seems to be scrabling around for backstory, he makes up something called Peruvian werejaguars which he mentions again and again and again, he mentions the adventure at the start of Last Crusade so many times its almost difficult to believe, but of his adventures during World War one, nothing, even when telling the woman involved all about his life.
But what about Indy?
Right. This is not an Indiana Jones novel. Indiana Jones is in it but apart from maybe two occasions he does not act like Indiana Jones. This is my main complaint with this book. Indiana spends the whole thing following his guides through a jungle. Following. Following. Following. When not following Indiana is talking about being a scout and the cross of coronado. Seriously, is this the only important thing to have happened to him? So yeah, there are two action sequences, maybe two and a half in the whole novel, his plane crashes, he shoots a guy, he falls into a river, and the very very very end he actually fights some zombies!!! Yes Indiana Jones fights some zombies!!! The river and the fight are the two, the half are the solitary shot and the plane crashing combined.
So yeah. Instead the 300 or so pages are dedicated mainly to building tension. At least I think that was Perry's intention. Most of the page count follows Gruber, the Nazi doctor, and Yamada, the Japanese doctor as they write to loved ones, think about how much they're missing home (alot!) and, in Yamadas case, practice sword fighting and calligraphy. All the while tramping along through the jungle. I'm guessing this was supposed to build up character, but it didn't work, in the end I really didn't care about these guys, I just wanted to know about Indy, and here, as I've mentioned, nothing new
The zombies are handled pretty well but they are barely in it at all, they show up maybe 5 times in the whole thing, Perry admits cheerfully in the introduction that he did no research at all, and it really shows.
The whole thing has this dark dank boring athmosphere, there are no temples, no vistas, nothing epic, just a boring trudge through a wood, at the end it starts to get a little better but then it ends.
This was a big disappointment for me, and while not as bad as Caidin's books they were more entertainng in a sorta of 'I can't believe I'm reading this sort of way' almost stopped reading it on many occasions. So yeah. Dull Dull Dull
2/10
