Righto I'm reviewing all the Indiana Jones books as I read them,I posted my reviews for rob mcgregors books over on another thread
http://raven.theraider.net/showthread.php?t=5858&page=2 so now I'm onto
Indiana Jones and the sky Pirates
Right. Quite a reputation this book has. Quite. a. reputation. And within minutes of picking up the book I could see why. Now I flew through the Mcgregor books, reading each one in a day, but sky pirates took me 4, which is a new record for Indiana Jones novels, it was just so difficult to push myself to the end, its just so.. not boring, well it is a bit, but so irrelevent.
Okay heres what I understand of the plot. Theres an evil organisation called.. EVIL standing for Enterprise Ventures International Limited. Which is in itself pretty stupid. Now they want to take over the world, by pretending that they're aliens. So they build a big superzepplin, and some flying saucers, powered by rockets, and start stealing stuff and blowing other stuff up. Fair enough. So Indiana Jones is called in to lead an international team, and seemingly every government in the world to find these guys and shut them down. Now I can understand this in concept, but what? Indiana Jones? hes a professor of archaeology for heavens sake, why? WHY? would he be able to give US army officers orders?! It makes no sense. Why is he the main figure in clandestine secret meetings with world leaders. Why?
Anyway, Indy decides to do alot of stuff. Lets see if I can remember what, as this is an excersise in making sense of the novel as much as it is a review. First he recruits a team of guys, all amazingly skilled and educated to a ridiculous degree, including a woman who hunts with a bow and arrow in the 'new forest' what she hunts in Pastoral England is anyones guess. Apart from Gale, the woman, we have no idea how Indy comes across the rest of his team. First he makes a professor in London beleive in these fake artefacts planted with the diamonds stolen by EVIL, then he goes to Chicago where he convinces Jack Shannon (who is no longer living in san francisco, and has somehow managed to get back with the mob, though the fact that his situation totally changed (marraige, new life) in genisis Deluge isn't mentioned), to use his men to rob a train. Indy and his team fly over in their ford trimotor (for this book is an ad for the ford trimotor) and grab the package. They then go to an airbase, where they go to a secret meeting in an underground situation room, after which Indy goes to a restaurant to flush out some guy.. apparantly. Indy, obsessed with learning to fly, gets some lessons that don't go very far, then takes to team to new york where they go to another secret meeting, one of his members is killed by an animotronic kodiac bear, after which they hook up with another new jamaican guy, fly to england (over about 20 pages) gets a passanger ferry blown up by pretending that he was on it (though the jamaican guy is and gets killed) Here we learn that the EVIL guys are on the run, with their sea base destroyed off screen, and another character we met before has in fact infiltrated their organisation, so its another 20 page trip back across the atlantic where they hook up with an Indian Guy, and blow up the zepplin. THE END.
Now if that makes sense to you. Well done. You can probably stop reading. Its just, so much about this novel doesn't make any sense. First of all theirs Indy's Character, gone is the man who gets things wrong, who gets in over his head and makes it up as he goes along, this Indy is a superhero, with a Holmes like intellect, and a secret plan that he won't tell anybody.. for no real reason. His actions throughout the novel at many times seem to be leading somewhere, but they're not. I mean, take the train robbery he perpetrates, I thought as I read this, ' oh I see,they're gonna try to get intentionally hijacked by the saucers' Nope, theres no real reason Indy does this, none I can see. Then later on, in the most out of character act, Indy allows a passenger ship to be blown up, killing hundreds of innocents, just to make the enemy beleive hes dead. They try to write it off by saying, 'they'd have done it anyway' but thats simply poppycock. And what does Indy do with this new anomymity? Nothing. He just flies back and ends the story. This is not Indiana Jones, this is some sort of evil palpatine like character. Plus, Indiana Jones cannot fly, and I wish he'd stop learning how.
Then theres the other characters, long long sections are dedicated to 'fleshing them out' but then they're not really used, Gale does next to nothing, and the two pilots exist seemingly only to make the reader realise you're pretty useless if you don't obsess about planes. As for the characters who die, only Frenchies death makes any sense, Tarkiz, the huge Turkish bodygaurd, is killed by an animatronic Kodiac bear, in a museum display!! This is ridiculous in so many levels, not least of which is THEY DID NOT HAVE ROBOTIC BEARS IN 1930!!! Hes immediatly replaced by the Jamacain guy, who, like everyone, is just amazing, speaks several languages, does akido, has loads of degrees, yada yada yada, but ten pages later hes killed off screen when Indy makes everyone believe hes dead.
The last half of the book is taken up by two flights, one to England, and one back again, pages and pages of flight description, wind velocities, torque. Fair enough, but we find once they get to England, all this flying about has hidden the actual plot, as we are told that the EVIL organisation is now on the run, by stuff that happened off screen.
Its just so frustrating, and then they just shoot the zepplin down, and it simply ends.
One last thing.. before I end this rather long rant. It didn't feel like 1930, all these governments meeting up in secret underground conference rooms, long distance bomb detonating hand held devices, killer robot kodiac bears, the fact that flying across the atlantic in a plane somehow makes Indy and his crew very visible. Also, somewhat unrelated, Indy carries a camera around his neck for the whole story, occasionally taking clandestine pictures, though seriously, it you were in a top secret meeting and there was some scruffy guy with a camera around his neck, wouldn't you say, hey, this meetings TOP SECRET no cameras. But anyway, he teaches his friends how to use it at one point in a long boring sequence, but the photos Indy takes turn out to have no relevence on the plot. Like a lot of things..
Oh and contunuity with the other novels suck, and the prose is clunky as hell. So yeah. Sky Pirates.