The Problems with Hollow Earth: An Honest Review
::WARNING! SPOILERS AHOY!::
In my recent fervor for all things Indiana Jones, I picked up Indiana Jones and the Hollow Earth. Having read Indiana Jones and the Philosopher's Stone helped me understand this book immensely; if you haven't read Stone, I suggest you do so rather than reading this atrocity. An calling Hollow Earth an atrocity is a complement: had it not started out strong, this would have been a complete waste of time.
The setup is thus: Indiana Jones can't seem to recall for the life of him exactly what happened during an adventure in the Arctic, where it seemed that he would surely die. He decides to recall what he knows to try and piece it together. When we begin, Indy is at home researching Coronado's Cross and where it might be located, when a mysterious stranger arrives, wounded an in need of Indy's services. He gives Indy a box with a strange piece of crystal and a journal, speaking of interior worlds and expeditions to the North Pole. Indy is pretty confused and unwilling to believe the old man, but takes the box in his charge before the old man dies. However, Nazi agents were following the old man (in fact, they'd ran him over before he came to Indy) and are now on Indy's trail, in search of the old man's journal.
This is where the book actually succeeds as a story: we get the delivery of mysterious package, we get Indy heading off to deliver the old man's body to a particular grave on his honor, and Nazis in pursuit. The main villain, Reingold, manages to get the journal after much trial and error, and indeed with some exciting moments. One that stood out for me was Indy and Reingold facing off, guns pointing at each other, as Indy warns Reingold not to shoot because the barrel of his gun is loaded with snow and will explode. Is Indy bluffing or isn't he? The author, Max McCoy, doesn't actually say, but that's what makes the tension work: we don't really know if Indy is bluffing the Nazi, meaning that the trigger could still be pulled and our hero could die. Of course, this doesn't happen, and our villain escapes, only to plague Indy at his next stop, before finally stealing the journal. The journal itself is a fascinating recount of the old man's expedition to the Arctic, and the wonderous things he's seen. At which point Indy resolves to get the journal back, in order to---
Oh, wait, no. He doesn't. He doesn't go after the journal. Our hero, Indiana Jones, who knows and realizes that there is some kind of power of archaeological significance that the Nazis are after, can't be bothered to track down the journal and discover the truth behind it. His childhood obsession, the Cross of Coronado, is what he's after. Or, at least, that's what I was led to believe when we hit the asinine sequence set in New Mexico.
The book, once we hit page 92, bogs itself down in absolutely unnesscessary details and events. In fact, the next one hundred pages could have been torn out and we would have had a better novel. I didn't care that Indy wanted Coronado's Cross---what about the journal? What about the mysterious message on the Thule stone that the old man used as a grave marker? What are the Nazis truly after? Well, Dr. Jones didn't seem to care; he was after his golden cross.
In New Mexico, there's a strange jumble of events: a local legend about a man named John Seven Oaks, Indy crawling forever through a strange labyrinth of caves, discovering a pile of gold (of which he takes some, for whatever reason, I don't know), leaving, getting saved from a flash flood by Dr. Ulla Tornaes, then encountering a Grizzly Adams type who threatens them until John Seven Oaks appears and saves them, then Ulla punches Seven Oaks, and we go to...New Orleans? To do what?
To give the gold to Rene Belloq in exchange for information on the whereabouts of the Crystal Skull from Philosopher's Stone. Read that again. Indy does a deal with BELLOQ before pissing Belloq off, at which point they agree to a duel in a cemetary with single shot pistols.
It was at this point that I realized that something was missing, so I searched for Indiana Jones novels online, and discovered that there was a book BETWEEN Philosopher's Stone and Hollow Earth that's necessary for understanding Hollow Earth. And while there had been references to Philosopher's Stone in the novel already, I didn't know that you needed to read the other works, or Hollow Earth wouldn't make sense. This is where Max McCoy nosedives from average writer to absolute pretension: he assumes you read his other novels in this series, and drops this information in here to continue that subplot. Look, had I never read Philosopher's Stone, and I'd read Hollow Earth on its own merits, I would have been really pissed off. An Indiana Jones adventure ought to be able to stand on its own without you needing to have read/seen the prior adventures. Raiders does this, Temple of Doom does this, and to an extent Crusade does this as well. Kingdom not so much, but this isn't about Kingdom. This is about Hollow Earth, which seriously fails in this regard.
McCoy builds up a lot of excitement in the first 90 pages. In fact, I was ready for another classic adventure along the lines of Philosopher's Stone when the story detours into New Mexico and New Orleans, where we learn that Indy wasn't obsessed over Coronado's Cross at all (despite earlier insinuations) but about the Crystal Skull, so that he can put it back and be with Alecia Dunstain, heroine of Philosopher's Stone, thus lifting the curse around it. He also set up an interesting villain with Reingold, but Reingold disappears on page 70 and doesn't reappear until page 220. That one hundred and fifty pages of no villain. That's pretty boring. And the sequence with Belloq and the duel was absolutely insulting. We're stopping the adventure for Indiana Jones to have a duel with Belloq, a person he wouldn't do a deal with in the first place, let alone engage in honorable combat. There's stuff to do, adventure to have, and we're stopping to have a duel. Give me a break. By the time we finally reach the government outpost where Indy is hooking up with the G-Men to chase down the Nazis and figure out what's going on with them, we've swerved around the main plot so severely that I had to go back and re-read the opening to remember what the novel was even about.
The coincidences abound after this. Alecia just happens to be with the Nazis in the Arctic. The waterproof canister containing the Crystal Skull just happens to be in the Arctic, and the Nazis just happen to be after THAT as well as the power of Ultima Thule. Indy just happens to be going after the Skull, the Nazis, Aleica, AND Ultima Thule. It's like McCoy realized that nothing had happened for a hundred pages, and throws it all together in a poorly conceived mixmash that culminates in the biggest "WTF?" I've seen/read in an Indiana Jones adventure. Really, the final puzzle is beyond cryptic, entering into foggy subtext land, and Sparks, the resident tech wiz, tries to piece it together. It's essentially a game of rainbow rocks, and what order they go in. Sparks, for all his eagerness, doesn't fit as being the one to unlock the final puzzle, because he's a mathematician, and arranging rainbow rocks doesn't scream PHD in Physics to me. It just didn't make sense, and neither did the standard "horrifc supernatural event" that Indy is known for. It just doesn't work.
After reading this novel, I can say that without a doubt, Max McCoy is a one-hit wonder when it comes to Indiana Jones. Philosopher's Stone was chessy adventure goodness, while this is simply a mess. Some might call it unfair to compare Stone to Hollow Earth so often in this review, but Hollow Earth only works when you recall the events of Philosopher's Stone and, I'm assuming, Indiana Jones and the Dinosaur Eggs. I was interesting in reading the latter, but upon realization that you MUST read Philosopher's Stone first, and after the horrible execution of Hollow Earth, I'm going to stay away from the remainder of McCoy's novels. I have yet to read anything by Rob Macgregor, who now intrigues me, and as such I'll check out one of his.
Do yourself a favor: skip this. There's a line at which a good fan should say "Hell, no. I'm not just going to buy ANYTHING Indy." This is that line.
Final score: 4/10