What is the Best 90's Indy novel?

YouNeverKnow

New member
Okay so basically the advice is to read all but Interior World which gets too goofy and the Caidin ones because they're lame? Or should I just hunker down and get the set featured on the Official Indy Shop? I'm trying to make my own decision here but the polarizing reviews are really making me unsure.
 

Attila the Professor

Moderator
Staff member
YouNeverKnow said:
Okay so basically the advice is to read all but Interior World which gets too goofy and the Caidin ones because they're lame? Or should I just hunker down and get the set featured on the Official Indy Shop? I'm trying to make my own decision here but the polarizing reviews are really making me unsure.

I'd read all of them. They probably take, what, like 3 hours per book? There's stuff that's carried over, and if you only omit three of twelve, why omit any at all? Especially don't skip the Interior World, because there's some payoffs in it from the previous five MacGregor's. And Caidin's character isn't the worst; there's some cool stuff in there.
 

Perhilion

New member
What Is The Best 90's Indy Novel?

Now that most of the novels are being re-released, I want to catch up on some of them, but which ones would you recommend? Which feel the most "Indy"?
 

Wiwi Kalawi

New member
Perhilion said:
Now that most of the novels are being re-released, I want to catch up on some of them, but which ones would you recommend? Which feel the most "Indy"?

I recently re-read all of the Indy books last year, but I'd have to say the best ones were by Max McCoy. The Philosopher's Stone in particular had a lot of "Raiders" moments with him crawling around a lost city in Central America after an idol, and movie-villain like Nazis and so forth. McCoy's books are great for fast, entertaining reads.
 

Attila the Professor

Moderator
Staff member
Truthfully, they all have some merits, and many refer to others...they're such quick reads, and so cheap, I'd consider going for all 12. The best, though, is probably Hollow Earth, by McCoy. MacGregor's characterization is quite good though, and Caidin does nice ensemble work.
 

ValenciaGrail

New member
Attila the Professor said:
Truthfully, they all have some merits, and many refer to others...they're such quick reads, and so cheap, I'd consider going for all 12. The best, though, is probably Hollow Earth, by McCoy. MacGregor's characterization is quite good though, and Caidin does nice ensemble work.

I agree with Atilla here - There is a chronological order to all twleve, and you get a good deal on continuity across books. The exact order is specified in other threads, but the sequence starts with Peril at Delphi and ends with Secret of the Sphinx.

Each can be enjoyed on its own merits, but characters are reintroduced and situations from previous books are referenced...including spoilers from previous books in some cases. This makes certain plot elements seem like sloppy story telling if you don't have the context from the previous "episodes".

I know this because I read them all mostly out of order, getting them as I could get hands on them. Certain things did not make sense until after the fact, when I read the previous book.

The Wall Marts in my area have them for $4.99 at the moment.

Belloq makes a couple of cameo appearances, as does Sallah, and Brody is involved as well. There is even a Crystal Skull Maguffin (not the same one as in KOTCS) in the four McCoy novels.

The weak sisters in the series are, in my opinion, the two Caidin novels. Sky Pirates was a aircraft technical manual cluttered with ocassional plot elements. It wasn't a bad read, actaully, but for this: I pretended that the main character was not Indiana Jones. There was very little archaeology or archaeological maguffins, and Indy was way too much of a Bond / Maguyver mash-up. It was a decent spy novel, but the protagonist had nothing in common with IJ other than the name.

But - all 12 are worth reading. The McCoy and Macgregor sequences read just like Indy movies that were never filmed.
 

|ZiR|

New member
ValenciaGrail said:
The weak sisters in the series are, in my opinion, the two Caidin novels. Sky Pirates was a aircraft technical manual cluttered with ocassional plot elements. It wasn't a bad read, actaully, but for this: I pretended that the main character was not Indiana Jones. There was very little archaeology or archaeological maguffins, and Indy was way too much of a Bond / Maguyver mash-up. It was a decent spy novel, but the protagonist had nothing in common with IJ other than the name.

I haven't been (un)fortunate enough to read Caidin's two novels yet. I've heard the "more like an aircraft manual" critism before. Are they really that horrible? What is it, like constant aviation descriptions/references throughout the story?
 

Lao_Che

Active member
I'd say the McCoy books are easily the most like the movies (I've read an Amazon review that says they are too much so), MacGregor takes the most risks - magic portals for example - and Caidin reads very much like the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles to me.
 
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ValenciaGrail

New member
|ZiR| said:
I haven't been (un)fortunate enough to read Caidin's two novels yet. I've heard the "more like an aircraft manual" critism before. Are they really that horrible? What is it, like constant aviation descriptions/references throughout the story?

ZiR, I wouldn't say they were horrible, just not Indiana Jones.
It's rather like biting into an oatmeal raisin cookie, expecting it to be a chocolate chip. I don't hate the former - but when I'm in the mood for chocolate chip, it's a bit of a let down.

There are very lengthy technical expositions on Trimotor aircraft, the special modifcations, the freight capacity, air speed, altitude, caliber and type of machine guns....etc...etc...etc...and then detailed specs on German airships, how many gas compartments holding how much hydrogen, what the cruising range is, what the fabric covering the tanks consisted of....etc...etc...

If you are an aviation buff, I suppose you'd really like it, but it gets a bit dry otherwise.

IJ also does next to no archaeology here; he's more like a pure special agent. (How did he know so much about aircraft technology?)
This read like Robert Ludlum or Tom Clancy.

BTW - the second of the two Caidin novels, The White Witch, is much better and reads a bit more like IJ, but still not to the same degree as McCoy or McGregor. Between the two, this by far the best IMO. Indy is more like Indy again (he's like pigs on roller skates trying to learn to fly a plane), there is interesting archaeology / mythology involved once again, and the technical aircraft jargon is toned down. It almost seems as if Caidin got negative feedback from Pirates, and took a bit of a different tact for the second book.
 

|ZiR|

New member
Thanks for the detailed answer! Love the cookie analogy. (y)

Definitely going to give Caidin's books a chance.
 

Violet

Moderator Emeritus
The most "Indy" novels to me would be 'Dance of the Giants', 'Seven Veils' (which is kind of like KOTCS, now that I think about it in terms of it's lost city and psychic powers), 'Genesis Deluge', 'Philosopher's Stone' and 'Hollow Earth.'

As for my absolute favourite it would be between 'Dance of the Giants', 'Seven Veils' and 'Hollow Earth.'

Btw, Marion does have a very small cameo in 'Genesis Deluge'. You really have to read between the lines.
 

tupogirl

New member
I finally found the books at the non 24 hour Wal Mart, but it only carries 2 titles. However, none of our WM's have the actual big book section, just part of an aisle.

Are you finding more then 2 titles? Is at a WM with a bigger book section? We'll be out of state soon, so I may pick up more at a different WM. Even with my Borders coupons, they're still costing me more than they would at WM.
 

Crack that whip

New member
I've seen most of the books at one outlet or another, but strangely enough, hardly anyone seems to have all of them - it's as though each different store offers a different subset of the books. Even the official online Indy shop offers just ten of the twelve books, sold as a set (it's missing the last two Rob MacGregor novels, ... Unicorn's Legacy and ... Interior World, the fifth and sixth books in the overall series). It seems totally bizarre to me that even the official IJ store itself wouldn't carry them all, but there you go.

The nearby Borders here has books 3,4, 7-9, 11 & 12, while I've seen books 1 & 2 here at Albertson's (a grocery store chain). I haven't been in a brick-&-mortar store yet that has all twelve books (at least, not the current editions - I do remember seeing them all at once back when they first came out in the '90s, when I got my copies). That said, you should be able to get all of them from any major online bookseller - Amazon has all of them, for example, and I imagine the online stores for Borders / Waldenbooks, Barnes & Noble, etc. do as well (though I haven't checked them all).
 

ValenciaGrail

New member
In my area (Denver), Barnes and Noble seems to have carry of the books than the Borders stores, so you might want to look there.

Also, in Borders, what IJ they do carry is not in the SciFi / Movie section....They're in Mystery / Suspense...which gets confusing
 

Rococo

New member
tupogirl said:
I finally found the books at the non 24 hour Wal Mart, but it only carries 2 titles. However, none of our WM's have the actual big book section, just part of an aisle.

Are you finding more then 2 titles? Is at a WM with a bigger book section? We'll be out of state soon, so I may pick up more at a different WM. Even with my Borders coupons, they're still costing me more than they would at WM.

Try Costco, if you have one in your area. I was pleasantly surprised today to find the books packaged in a 3-book set, for 11.99$/set. Only 9 of the 12 books were there (at least, at the Costco I was at) but it sure beat buying each one at cover price!
 

Crack that whip

New member
Rococo said:
Try Costco, if you have one in your area. I was pleasantly surprised today to find the books packaged in a 3-book set, for 11.99$/set. Only 9 of the 12 books were there (at least, at the Costco I was at) but it sure beat buying each one at cover price!

Oh, what titles are in the set (or do you mean there's more than one set)? Do they package them together in sequence (so that you get, say, books 1-3 together, books 4-6 together, etc.), or does each box just have three books randomly pulled out of the sequence?
 

Rococo

New member
Crack that whip said:
Oh, what titles are in the set (or do you mean there's more than one set)? Do they package them together in sequence (so that you get, say, books 1-3 together, books 4-6 together, etc.), or does each box just have three books randomly pulled out of the sequence?

They came in three-packs, for $11.99 for three. Groupings were as follows:

Genesis Deluge
Philosophers Stone
Hollow Earth

Seven Veils
Dinosaur Eggs
Peril at Delphi

Dance of the Giants
Secret of the Sphinx
Sky Pirates

If there was a final set with the last three, I didn't see it.

The KOTCS novelization was also there, really well priced (14.99$).
 
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