Indiana Jones and the Army of the Dead

Attila the Professor said:

I guess I never commented on this. I read it in a short period as well, LawgSkrak, one or two days, and I still thought it was fairly lousy.

I wasn't as bothered as some by the level of focus on the antagonists - the German and the Japanese commanders were somewhat interesting, if conventional - but they did still drag. The bits with the Boukman weren't terribly interesting, however.

We did get the one scene with some actual archaeological technique, and that was welcome, but apart from that so little happened; just a lot of trekking through a single place without much in the way of action. (McCoy's Dinosaur Eggs is probably the model for an Indy narrative of this sort that does it well.)

The use of Mac was a major lost opportunity, without any effort made to flesh out a character with a lot of possibilities. I don't think it even took the opportunity to clarify whether he's a professional treasure hunter or archaeologist.

Perhaps the best that can be said for it is that it fills in a time in which we know little about Indy's adventures, and takes him to a locale in which we have never seen him in any fiction above the level of the comic books or Find Your Fate adventures.

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I agree with you on the author not making good use of Mac. I also would have liked for him to clarify if Mac was just an intelligence agent who follows Indy on his adventures or if he was an archaeologist like some sources claim. It appears in the movie that he is not an archaeologist and just cares about money. He seems to have no knowledge of the artifacts he sees.

Stoo said:

I bought the book when it came out and still haven't read it yet!

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Wha???

Seriously, don't bother. I haven't re-read it since the first time I read it. And that's saying something.

Ska said:

Comparing it to the older novels, I put it on par with Martin Caidin's stories. And that is not a compliment.

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Shot down. It's on par with White Witch in my opinion. Which isn't as bad as Sky Pirates- I never finished it despite a few attempts despite Sky Pirates having a more interesting concept than AoD.

I disagree, the concept of Sky Pirates is odd, at least in Army of the Dead he is going after a relic, he is, after all, an archaeologist.
But yeah, as good as White Witch.

Army of Dead vs. White Witch

I've had more problems getting through the Army of the Dead than I did the White Witch...

I don't know, maybe I just wish it would focus more on Indy and less on everyone else--it's almost like he's trying to write like Tom Clancy (who has all these plotlines floating around to have them all collide in an epic finally).

But, I'm not a writer, just a reader...

So did anyone ever figure out what the deal is with the Peruvian werejaguars?
The only reference I can think of is Young Indiana Jones and the Eye of the Tiger, but that was a weretiger and it happened in India.
I'm just now finally reading Indiana Jones and the Army of the Dead- and sad to say, it probably won't be my favorite Indy novel- but it's not necessarily all bad. I'm liking some parts of it- at least it's another adventure with Mac in it during the summer of 1943- so we get a little bit more inkling on Indy's World War II exploits.
As others have mentioned though- I would still definitely love to see the Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings novelization by Rob MacGregor as well. At this point, I have read all of the other Indy novels (MacGregor's, Caiden's and McCoy's) as well as the Young Indiana Jones books. I'd love to have an English translation of the Hohlbein novels but that apparently is never happening- so thank goodness for fans doing translations.
I guess I'll have to finally read through all the scenarios in the Find Your Fate books after I finish this Indy novel...

OK, finally got around to reading this.

I first tried to read this book when it was released back in 2009, and to be honest, I guess, like Indy 4, my expectations were set WAY to high. I made it to about page 100 before giving up. Recently, after going through such a long Indy drought, I decided to give it another shot. I read the book over the course of 3 days. Technically, the book has a very good layout for a fast-paced read. It's chapters were pretty short, kept to 10-15 pages or less, which keeps me turning them. But I still felt it was a little bit of a chore to get through. The story wasn't bad, but it wasn't great either. It just felt like this was Mac's adventure, and Indy was just along for the ride. The German and Japanese villains were interesting, but Steve Perry spent ENTIRELY too much time on them. A lot of it! Their back story concept could have been presented in maybe 4 or 5 pages each. But in the end, I think he would have ended up with a very short book! Also, there was no big payoff. The author spent more time fleshing out the villains, only to have them meet a rather quick and anti-climatic demise. The main protagonist, the Boukman, was OK. I never really felt him to be that menacing though. Maybe some examples of havoc he could have caused in the past? But in the end, his demise wasn't that interesting. As for Indy, he really didn't do much except for walk around and ford a couple of rivers. Also, there was a brief bit where Indy did some archaeological excavation and instruction on soil sampling, which was cool. It lasted just enough to give some legitimacy to his technique.

The underground river escape was pretty good. I definitely won't call it the worst book, I think Sky Pirates still holds that torch, but it was definitely not great. After lowering my expectations I read it pretty quickly, so that was a plus. The love interest was ok. If you consider this a fairly minor Indy adventure, I'd say it was OK at best. If you're Jonesing for more Jones (pun intended), give it a shot. My advice is to try and read it rather quickly. If you let it sit for a few days, you just might lose interest.

One last thought - I think I'd give Steve Perry another shot at Indy. This story could have been shortened and made into a teen novel like the Pyramid of the Sorcerer or Mystery on Mt Sinai adventures and would have fit pretty good into those formats. If he's given the time to craft a good story, I think he could carry Max McCoy and Rob MacGregor's torch as he seemed to have Indy's mannerisms and attitude right.

Were-Jaguars

One of the levels of the Infernal Machine video game had Indy in Peru looking for a jaguar idol, I believe. It's been a LOOOOONG time since I played that game and I don't remember if there were were-jaguards or not. Also, did Indiana Jones and the Pyramid of the Sorcerer have were-jaguars? Or Mystery of Mt Sinai? I seem to remember them in one of those, but not sure. Once again it's been quite awhile since I read them.

Thanks for the info on the werejaguars, punisher5150.

So as I posted earlier- I was reading this book last year, but kind of dropped off on it. However, I've finally finished it! (More or less- or at least, as finished as I'm going to get with it.)
This may be one of the fastest reads I've ever done of a book. Well, I was kind of doing a speed read of it, but I finished Indiana Jones and the Army of the Dead yesterday- all during the course of the day. Of course, I had read some of this Steve Perry book a while back but never really finished it- so that helped. I skipped through pretty quickly with reading a lot of it- but it actually does move and read pretty quickly with fairly short chapters. It gets into a lot of voodoo and zombies stuff though, so I skipped through most all of those scenes as that stuff does get me pretty squeamish... anyway- I got the gist of what was happening and finished with the book. Indy does have a few encounters with snakes in the book and does crack his whip a few times as well as has a few struggles to keep his hat on his head. So it has all those kinds of classic moments, not to mention tons of references to all four of the movies and even one of the video games and possibly other books. And we get an early adventure with Indiana Jones and George "Mac" McHale, so that is nice- since we only get to see the character otherwise in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I don't think it's the greatest Indiana Jones novel- but it's not totally horrible or anything either. Nonetheless, I'm glad to be finished with it as I really don't care to read it again. But it was interesting to see Indy fighting zombies in an adventure on Haiti during World War II, as I don't think he's had much dealings with voodoo and zombies otherwise- so at least it was something different for him to explore- and the black pearl, the Heart of Darkness, that he retrieves- was a pretty interesting artifact too.
As others have mentioned, I did enjoy that scene of Indiana Jones and Mac doing archaeological work- that was cool.
It was nice to have another Indiana Jones book to read as I've already read all the 12 others that have previously been released by Rob MacGregor, Martin Caidin and Max McCoy. (Too bad I'll probably never be able to read the German books by Wolfgang Hohlbein- unless they finally get translated to English some day.) And of course, I'm also still saddened that I'll probably never get a chance to read the novelization of Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings by Rob MacGregor- even though the text of the book is completed and cover art has even been done as well. For some reason the publishing company decided against releasing it, probably because the video game didn't do that well- but that's sad because for Indy fans like me who don't have a Wii or Playstation 2, I can't even enjoy the game (since it wasn't released to PC)- but at least if the book had been released, I could have enjoyed the storyline. But oh well- maybe one day that lost Indy book will be released- maybe around the time the 5th. movie gets made, as Harrison Ford, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas have all talked about.

I'm reading the book now, so I won't look at the spoiler reviews here. But I wanted to mention something that bothered me. Early in the book, Indy tells Mac about how he got his fedora, and how he never saw the man who gave it to him again. But I seem to remember another Indy-novel where that man did show up; I think it was "The Lost People". But then I remembered, that's one of the books written by Wolgang Hohlbein, so never translated into English, so for that reason never canon.

Caidanbi said:

I'd give it about a 4 out of 10. I've read all the Indiana Jones novels, and this is my least favorite. I mean, it wasn't completely horrible, but it could've been a lot better. I don't really care if I ever read it again :-S

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What's your favourite one?

Here's my review of "Army of the Dead":

One time in my teens, I got a stack of Wolfgang Hohlbein's books as a birthday present from my sister, all of them extra adventures about my favorite fictional character, Indiana Jones. Until then I had no idea that there were books about him. In the years that followed I collected them all, 24 in total.

Last year I discovered that in 2009, after the release of the fourth movie "Kingdom of the Crystal Skull", a final book was published: "Indiana Jones and the Army of the Dead" by Steve Perry. No, not the singer of Journey, but the fantasy and science-fiction writer. He has also written books in the Star Wars universe. I ordered it right away and I've been reading it for the past month.

Indy and Mac are sent on a mission in the midst of World War II to prevent the Nazis or the Japanese from getting their hands on a mysterious black pearl, dubbed the "Heart of Darkness" by writer Joseph Conrad. In addition to the story of our heroes, we also read from the point of view of three antagonists, one from each enemy camp: the German, the Japanese, and that of the local population, a Caribbean island where strange practices take place. That interaction is quite cool and ensures variation and tension build-up in the story.

Perry gives quite a lot of details about weapons and planes that I didn't necessarily need to be in there. The rest of the book is pure escapism. I recognized a lot of terms in the book from the computer game "Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers" that deals with voodoo practices in New Orleans. He gives the three antagonists in the story enough background so that they don't become superficial, caricatural villains.

What unfortunately remains somewhat superficial, is the character of Indiana Jones himself. It's not your typical globetrotting adventure, no quests in hidden temples full of booby-traps. The setting is limited to Haiti and a neighboring island where only the jungle and storm weather - besides the zombies of course - thwart our hero. This adventure could just as easily have been experienced by another fictional hero, there's nothing that really makes it Indiana Jones.

I read the book years ago I was looking for a digital copy of the book and it looks like they never made a pub version of it? Someone do so magic and help me find a scanned/digital copy of it so I can complete my novel collection!

I remember reading the novel in high school and finding it to be quite a drag. There was too much focus on too many different villains and there were not enough promised zombies. I appreciated having Mac included elsewhere in Indy lore beyond Crystal Skull, because even though he's one of my least favorite characters in the four current movies, he's still an interesting enough individual, and it was nice to see him getting along with Indy at the height of their friendship. But, as others here having pointed out, he's kind of just there. I don't recall the author doing anything special with the character to retroactively make his betrayal more impactful in the fourth film.

So many great concepts, but ultimately just wasted potential. It's my least favorite of the Indiana Jones novels I've read.