The Tzer Island book blog features book reviews written by TChris, the blog's founder.  I hope the blog will help readers discover good books and avoid bad books.  I am a reader, not a book publicist.  This blog does not exist to promote particular books, authors, or publishers.  I therefore do not participate in "virtual book tours" or conduct author interviews.  You will find no contests or giveaways here.

The blog's nonexclusive focus is on literary/mainstream fiction, thriller/crime/spy novels, and science fiction.  While the reviews cover books old and new, in and out of print, the blog does try to direct attention to books that have been recently published.  Reviews of new (or newly reprinted) books generally appear every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  Reviews of older books appear on occasional weekends.  Readers are invited and encouraged to comment.  See About Tzer Island for more information about this blog, its categorization of reviews, and its rating system.

Entries in James Rollins (2)

Wednesday
Aug162023

Tides of Fire by James Rollins

Published by William Morrow on August 15, 2023

Readers know what they’re getting in a Sigma Force thriller:  action, undersea adventure, above-sea adventure, fights, explosions, and more action. Sigma Force is a “clandestine organization operating at the periphery of military structure.” Military operatives have been “re-trained in various scientific disciplines.” In other words, soldiers have been made into scientists. Wouldn’t it be easier to make scientists into soldiers? I mean, it takes longer to master a science than to master the art of fighting. Doesn’t matter. Readers are best served by not thinking too deeply about Sigma Force novels.

Much of the action takes place off the coast of Australia in the Coral Sea, home of the Titan Project. The Titan X, a “thousand-foot-long gigayacht,” houses a couple dozen research laboratories. The yacht supports Titan Station, a research facility that consists of a floating platform (Titan Station Up) and an inverted pyramid consisting of five tiers that rests two miles below the ocean surface (Titan Station Down). Submersibles ferry researchers from Up to Down and back.

In the early years of the nineteenth century, Sir Thomas Raffles was investigating the relationship between volcanic eruptions in Southeast Asia and people who turn to stone. Rather than turning his findings into a report that would benefit humanity, he divided his research papers and hid them in separate places to make it as difficult as possible for researchers to find them when they will be most needed. That makes no sense, but hiding secrets that will save the planet from disaster is a common thriller theme. What fun would it be if the hero could just pick up a book and find the solution?

Back in the present, marine biologist Phoebe Reed is studying deep-sea coral for the Titan Project. She wonders if coral exists in the deep trenches that extend below the seabed. While she’s puzzling over that question, she discovers that a new form of coral has a nasty stinger. Yes, the stinger turns people to stone, or into something that resembles stone.

Reed also discovers a Chinese submarine that crashed through the coral on the seabed. It turns out that the submarine was armed with nuclear weapons and the Chinese military doesn’t want anyone snooping around it. Of equal importance, the coral doesn’t like being disturbed by radioactive submarines.

James Rollins fills his books with characters. This one includes nineteenth century sailors and explorers, members of a Chinese triad, Grayson Pierce and his Sigma Force operatives, officers of the PLA, employees of a couple different museums, and a Russian assassin who sets up the next novel in the series. None of the characters have much personality. They exist to drive the action unless they are standing to the side and explaining the plot. Readers probably don’t pick up a Rollins novel expecting a character-driven story. There’s no risk of finding one here.

The plot is a bit eye-rolling. Earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions threaten to destroy all life on the planet. One school of thought blames the Chinese. Another school of thought holds that the natural disasters are caused by cheesed-off undersea dragons. Thankfully, indigenous people in Raffles' day knew how to appease the dragons. Sigma Force and Chinese soldiers battle to uncover the secret to appeasement that Raffles carefully concealed. Meanwhile, the heroes of the Titan Project are dodging Chinese torpedoes and various undersea menaces.

Rollins includes an abundance of sciency-sounding explanations in an attempt to make the plot seem plausible. Still, the story doesn’t make much sense. I haven’t mentioned the ancient planetoid that split apart, crashing into both the Earth and the moon. Parts of the planetoid on the Earth and moon are talking to each other. Certain Chinese villains think they can weaponize the planetoid. The scientists suspect that some of the earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and other natural disasters were unwittingly caused by Chinese astronauts poking around on the moon, so don’t blame the sea dragons. They just want to be left alone but they turn out to be helpful if they hear the right music.

So yeah, the plot often devolves into silliness, but rationality (like characterization and graceful prose) isn’t a central feature of action-adventure thrillers. The point is action and adventure. Rollins regularly destroys parts of the world. In Tides of Fire, earthquakes and volcanos threaten an extinction event. I’ve never been a big Rollins fan and this novel didn’t convert me, but I give Rollins credit for putting in an enormous amount of work to make the story go. Tides of Fire delivers a fast-moving action/adventure story and that’s all it’s meant to do.

RECOMMENDED

Friday
Nov152013

Black Flag by Brad Taylor and Blood Brothers by James Rollins and Rebecca Cantrell

The trend of offering a short story in digital format to promote an upcoming series novel (a excerpt of which is packaged with the short story) creates buzz for the novel and a bit of extra income -- or so writers and their publishers hope. Two stories that follow that trend are reviewed here.

"Black Flag" by Brad Taylor

Published by Dutton on November 19, 2013

Avast, me bucko! Arrrr! No, it isn't Talk Like a Pirate Day, but "Black Flag" put me in the mood. The latest Taskforce story is about ... you guessed it ... pirates. Unlikely though it seems, Knuckles commits his team members to help search for Blackbeard's treasure. Of course, the treasure hunters who want to hire the business that the Taskforce uses as a cover are not your ordinary adventurers who spend their time diving for doubloons.

"Black Flag" promotes The Polaris Protocol, the fifth novel in Brad Taylor's Taskforce series. Taylor's short stories have steadily improved, and "Black Flag" is the most imaginative of the ones he's produced. There isn't much that's new here in terms of character development, but that's to be expected in a between-novels story. There is, however, plenty of action, the pirate theme lends itself to some tongue-in-cheek fun, and (as is typical of Taylor) the story is smart and fast-moving.

RECOMMENDED

"Blood Brothers" by James Rollins and Rebecca Cantrell

Published ditigally by William Morrow Impulse on October 22, 2013

"Blood Brothers" is part of the Order of the Sanguines series, which began with The Blood Gospel. It promotes the second book in the series, Innocent Blood.

Arthur Crane finds an orchid in his apartment and flashes back to 1968 when, as a reporter in Great Britain who traveled to San Francisco to write about the death of a British folksinger, he saw a poster bearing the picture of Christian, a relative who was almost like a brother as Arthur was growing up. He didn't find Christian that day, but he did learn that the folksinger's killer left an orchid on his body. A pattern soon developed -- the victim receives an orchid in the morning and is killed twelve hours later, another orchid left on the body -- leading Arthur to dub the murderer The Orchid Killer. Arthur knew things weren't going well for him when he found an orchid on his typewriter. The story moves on from there until Arthur returns to the present and his second orchid.

Some aspects of "Blood Brothers" are unoriginal, including the inevitable "secret order buried deep within the Catholic Church," and Rollins/Cantrell are not subtle in their character development. Still, the story moves quickly, the setting is described in convincing detail, and action scenes are more plausible than is common in thrillers (at least if you discount the fang-like teeth that both good guys and bad guys are sporting). I liked "Blood Brothers" enough to recommend it to the legions of James Rollins fans but I wouldn't recommend it to readers who are anxious to find something new and different. Nothing in the story convinced me that the world needs another series of books about an ancient secret society.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS