Indiana Jones and the Philosopher’s Stone by Max McCoy review, part 1 (SPOILERS)
This is my first lengthy (sorry about that
) review out of the four McCoy books, so apologies beforehand if my writing isn’t up to scratch. Well, here goes
I thoroughly liked
Indiana Jones and the Philosopher’s Stone, I appreciated the way it presented itself while the story and the MacGuffin were for the most part great. I felt it was perfectly balanced between being rooted to our world but still had the grandness and spectacle we expect from an Indy-plot and the MacGuffin. Though of course not as effective as the movies I still feel it does what the Indy movies does so well (ehm, most of them anyway…
); the adventure and the characters steer the action & plot in search of the MacGuffin and not the other way around.
I usually prefer that chapters run for 15-20 pages and was a little worried when I saw that most of the chapters here ran for 25-30 pages; luckily the pacing and writing was good and dense, so it really didn’t bother me at all. I didn’t mind too much of plot coincidences like when Indy looking for a room to rent for the night and stumbles upon one which the owner also runs a bookstore and knows things about the Voynich manuscript and the Philosopher’s Stone (in fact the fascists and other interested people have already given him a visit before Indy). It’s a story meant to entertain, and it did that to me so these minor grievances did not ruin my reading-experience at all.
Structurally, it followed the pattern of the films without being hampered the tropes/traditions, it did it in a way that felt suited to an action-adventure novel; we have an adventurous prologue in Honduras, a teaching scene, introduction to the MacGuffin, some sort of recruiting before the adventure beginning, fun & colourful characters, booby traps, gruesome villain deaths and lost MacGuffin at the end etc. On a sidenote, I liked the plot point of the missing/stolen Crystal Skull in the epilogue, it’s been haunting Indy throughout the story (without being intrusive towards the main story/MacGuffin). A great tease for the next McCoy novel and can’t wait to experience Indy's further (mis?)adventures with the elusive Crystal Skull of Cozan.
Special mention goes to the opening in Honduras: it’s a nice nod to the line of dialogue between Chattar Lal and Indy during Temple of Doom:
Chattar Lal: "
I seem to remember that in Honduras you were accused of being a graverobber rather than an archaeologist."
Indiana Jones: "
The newspapers exaggerated the incident."
I mostly like the way McCoy writes Indy in this book, he’s as resourceful, charming, and vulnerable as we come to expect from the character, it was easy to imagine Harrison Ford saying the lines and do the action as it was written. Just like the best of the films, he gets hurt a lot after doing dangerous ‘’stunts’’ which helps humanizes him even further; after hanging on to his dear life on a airship his hands are hurt and frozen so badly that he gets treatment on the airship afterwards. I enjoyed the plot point of the curse of the Crystal Skull (‘’You will kill what you love’’) that plagues Indy throughout the book. For example, when he and Alecia escape from Sarducci’s armed guards in his Museum in Rome and by the villains sadistic design, Indy ‘’runs’’ into the Crystal Skull locked behind bulletproof glass, you really feel the tension as he tries to break through the glass before the guards reach him and Alecia. He ultimately fails to get it and you really feel for him when considering the what the curse does and his fear for Alecia and his growing feelings about her throughout the book. The skull follows the tradition of elusive artefacts in the tradition of the Fertility Idol in
Raiders, ‘’Peacock’s Eye’’ in
Temple or the ‘’Cross of Coronado’’ in
Crusade and like some of the artefacts, Indy will get it back at a later event. What I like with all these artefacts is that Indy didn’t get them right away, we witness him failing and learning from it and that helps humanise him and makes us want to root for the big screen’s (and book) greatest hero even more and rejoice whenever he’s successful in his pursuits.
At first I thought I found some nitpicks in Indy's characterization when reading the book; midway through the novel when Alecia uses the Shew Stone to transcribe part of the manuscript, He tells her it’s a "parlor game". A few pages later he's telling her how he doesn't want to develop any feelings for her because of a "curse" put on her by an artifact from a previous expedition. In short; it seems he doesn’t believe in the in the artefact they’re chasing but he believes in a curse, something I’ve found a bit strange. After some back and forth in my mind I thought about what Alecia said to him and now I’m not so sure if it’s something to really nitpick about… ‘’You're just saying that to protect your image as a scientist, I think you actually believe in it quite a bit, Dr. Jones, but you're not willing to admit it’’. This is essential to his character, even though Indy's witnessed powerful and magical things throughout his lifetime, he’s careful who he thrust this information to; if he confides his findings to the wrong people, he would just be looked as some crackpot archaeologist/fame-hunter instead of a serious-minded scientist or worse, the potential danger if the wrong people get the information about these powerful artefacts and secrets. But then again if he’s open to her about the curse, why is he cynical about the use of the Shew Stone to transcribe the manuscript? I’m overthinking this so I better move on to the rest of the characters…
To be continued