What is the Best 90's Indy novel?

Horchata

New member
I've only read dinosaur eggs, but thought it was amazing. Just bought the rest of the books hoping they're just as good!:whip:
 

Dust McAlan

New member
I've read two all the way through, Philosopher's Stone and White Witch. I'm currently reading through Hollow Earth at the moment, which started out strong but seems to have taken a left turn into "Huh?" territory. I prefer Philosopher's Stone out of the three, but I admittedly haven't read White Witch in a loooooong time. I really want to pick it up again. I don't mind the aforementioned "aircraft manual" style.

Is it just me, or does McCoy just not "get" Indy's personality? The adventures are very Indiana Jones, but Indy himself seems like a 30's stereotype that the character was based on. There's no real charm, and his speech seems very forced.
 

agentsands77

New member
Dust McAlan said:
Is it just me, or does McCoy just not "get" Indy's personality? The adventures are very Indiana Jones, but Indy himself seems like a 30's stereotype that the character was based on. There's no real charm, and his speech seems very forced.
I agree.

Anyway, I've never really been impressed by any of the novels. I think they frequently have good concepts, but are lacking in execution.
 

Indy~Annie

New member
there good but i thought they treated Indy more like a james bond...he wasnt really looking for artifacts in lots of the books. oh well when its all ya got its perfect.lol
 

Quickening

New member
Ive got all the Indiana Jones books aside from "Peril at Delphi", "Secret of the Sphinx", "the Hollow Earth" and "Dinosaur Eggs".

I can confirm the reports about "Sky Pirates". Its not badly written or anything, it's just that the main character could be anyone. I can't think of a single Indiana Jones element in there. The title of the book put me off straight away but going by the old saying I read it anyway and was still disappointed.
White Witch was a bit dodgy to.

I think my favourite Indiana Jones book is "Seven Veils". I love the inclusion of Colonel Percy Fawcett (as someone who is into these things) and it just felt like a great adventure.
Im not sure about "Interior World". I don't like the ambiguous ending and hell KOTCS has nothing on this in the "out there" stakes.

Can anyone tell me if "Dinosaur Eggs" is worth reading? The title sounds silly and I can't even imagine what the story is.
Also, does "Hollow Earth" clash with "Interior World" at all?
 

davros72

New member
Quickening said:
I can confirm the reports about "Sky Pirates". Its not badly written or anything, it's just that the main character could be anyone. I can't think of a single Indiana Jones element in there. The title of the book put me off straight away but going by the old saying I read it anyway and was still disappointed.
That was my biggest (but not only) beef with Sky Pirates. Indiana Jones was simply not Indiana Jones. The things he did, the things he said, almost nothing felt like the Indiana Jones character we know. How he handled his friends/teammates, how he handled himself in conferences, nothing felt right.

The writing itself wasn't horrible (except some passages of terribly clunky dialogue which almost felt like it had been translated into English just a bit incorrectly). The plot itself was very poorly executed. The villains of the piece appear in only one "scene" about halfway through the book. Motivation and character of the bad guys just about nonexistent. The thread about the cuneiform boxes being planted by Indy was poorly handled and felt very pointless. Too much time spent in conferences and flying in that dang Ford trimotor. Plus all the back story of Indy's teammates squandered as the characters themselves are wasted and hardly utilized. (And I only have about 4 pages left, but is there any resolution to the "we have a mole in our team" storyline? Or did I miss something as I started losing interest in the last half? Or is that carried over into The White Witch?) But overall the biggest problem with the book was the unrecognizable person claiming to be "Indiana Jones." It sure feels like Caidin wanted to write a particular novel and changed one of his main character's names to "Indiana Jones."

On a positive note, I was pleasantly surprised to see links to the MacGregor novels, I had thought a new author would ignore the previous novels, not necessarily directly contradict them, just not mention anything from them. It was nice to see MacGregor characters and events mentioned, and even an old friend reappear (albeit in an almost pointless capacity).

Can you tell I was extremely dissatisfied with the book? Here's hoping The White Witch improves. If not, thank goodness Caidin only did the two.
 

ValenciaGrail

New member
davros72 said:
Can you tell I was extremely dissatisfied with the book? Here's hoping The White Witch improves. If not, thank goodness Caidin only did the two.

IMO, The White Witch is indeed a significant improvement over Sky Pirates. The character called Indiana Jones in TWW actually somewhat resembles the namesake from the films and the MacGregor / McCoy novels. He is quite different than the pseudo Bond / Macguyver figure from Sky Pirates.

There is actually archaeology and interesting history once again in TWW, as well as a clever twist. Caiden tones down the technical aircraft jargon considerably in TWW, though he can't seem to avoid it completely

It's doesn't quite meet MacGregor / McCoy standards, but TWW is about half way in between Sky Pirates and the work of the other two authors.
 

TrailBlazer

New member
Depends on how into Indy you are. There aren't that many novels (at least the 12 "official ones I know of), so do you want to start with the best or work your way through them all?

I've enjoyed the Max McCoy books the most, so far. Then the McGregor's. I've only read "Sky Pirates" from Caiden and it felt least like an Indy story to me (actually, I'd have gone with the different kind of adventure thing, if it didn't feel like 200 pages of planning and training for the mission).

I've been reading them all out of order, simply because I haven't laid hands on all of them yet. I wouldn't say it's ruined it to go out of order, but it might have been the optimal way to go if I had.

If you just want one Indy story and then it's out of your system, I'd go with one of the McCoy's.
 

Crack that whip

New member
Since it appears to fall under the scope of the original question the way it was phrased, I'll go ahead and say The Complete Making of Indiana Jones.
:D

The novels? Honestly, if one is going to read any of them, I think it's probably best to just read them all, and in order. But to answer the question, I'd say "the best" is probably one of the first few Rob MacGregor novels, or one of the Max McCoy ones, but it's hard for me to narrow it down much beyond that (though in part that's because it's been a while since I read them; I'm planning on reading them again soon).
 

LawgSkrak

Member
I was wondering, do any of the books after MacGregor's books ever make any mention of characters or situations from Macgregor's novels?
 

davros72

New member
LawgSkrak said:
I was wondering, do any of the books after MacGregor's books ever make any mention of characters or situations from Macgregor's novels?
I'm only up to McCoy's "Philosopher's Stone", but from what I'm recalling, Caidin's "Sky Pirates" mentions MacGregor stuff, including a brief (wasted) appearance by Jack Shannon, with a lot of little references to previous MacGregor adventures, Deirdre, Stonehenge, etc. I think "White Witch" mentioned some of that too. So far McCoy hasn't referenced anything, at least not that I can recall jumping out at me.
 
since no one is replying I think Mccoy did the best with mcgreagor in close second and caiden is dead last. Mccoy's books feel the most like the Movies and McGreagor's books remind me of a more adventurous young indiana jones:whip:
 
Top