There's a chapter in The Count of Monte Christo in which a man faces ruin unless promised payments are received by the end of the month. As the chapter progresses things get more and more bleak for this man, there seems to be no way out of the ruin and debt he will face. Finally as the deadline approaches and despair has become so all encompassing for this poor man that the reader can't help but feel his utter desolation. His decision to kill himself and save his family the humiliation seems to be the only solution he can find. Until just at the last moment, Dantes' payments arrive.
It's a chapter so strangely thrilling, so affecting that it grabs you.
It's been twenty odd years since I read The Count of Monte Christo, and that chapter I still remember, it's incredible still to this day.
It most be a first in which this book by Preston and Child almost bests that chapter. The last 1/5 of this book is almost as gripping and involving.
Incredible.
Bring on the rest of their works. I think I'm going to enjoy them.

This book ended up on my radar when I had a sudden random hankering for horror novels taking place in the arctic or antarctic. I wouldn't call this horror, rather, it is an adventure novel with elements of mystery.

The plot itself is not complicated and boils down to: good guys trying to get treasure, bad guys try to stop them. We've seen this plot line in many other books, from Treasure Island to the Da Vinci Code. In this novel, the treasure is a meteorite that has a bit of a mystery surrounding it. Additionally, there's also the token bad guy, who, indeed serves his role but does nothing more. I suppose this segues us into character.

No, no, no we cannot start with character in a review for this book. So let's go with plot first. Without spoilers, I'll just say it's a decent plot and has a few cool and exciting moments. I was never bored reading this book, but I also don't think it did anything particularly unique. It was entertainment, nothing more (albeit good entertainment). That being said, it truly did try to dig a bit deeper. However that didn't happen in plot, but in character development.

So with this segue, are we ready to review character? This time yes. First, let me point out that I don't expect much in the way of character development in these sorts of adventure novels. And unfortunately in this case, the character development did more harm than good. The author(s) tried to give several characters growth arcs, specifically MacFarlane (growth from a lone wolf to a team player -- this was the best character growth in the novel), Captain Britton, Rachel Amira, and Glinn. I really need to address the latter two. Rachel Amira had so. much. potential as a character. She was a mathematics genius and she wasn't afraid to show her skills until....she became a love interest. Suddenly she was a damsel in distress, needing a man to save her and her titanic intellect was put aside for most of the rest of the novel. Do I really need to go into why this is a little bit problematic? (Also side note - the Macfarlane - Amira romance was so unnecessary. It did literally nothing in the way of plot development).

And Glinn. Ugh Glinn. He had just as much potential as Amira. I found his character to be extremely compelling as someone who is extremely confident in his control of every variable in every situation, and how he reacts when faced with the unexpected. But again, why did he have to have a love interest? It made no sense for his character: as someone whose personality revolves around logic and risk assessment suddenly there's emotions and feelings, and love for another character? Admittedly he didn't really know how to handle these emotions, but the entire thing felt out of place and did nothing at all for the development of the plot.

The writing itself is good, not needlessly wordy or too sparse. No complaints here.

I'm forgetting what other categories I should review because it's been so long (and I'm so tired -- it's January 2021 and the world is falling apart).

So I'll just end this review with the following point: I would have given this book four stars if there had been less character development. As it stands now, 3 stars (I'd give it like 3.25 if I could, but I can't - so voila).

Fun story with interesting characters. Great epilogue!

I've been a huge fan of these authors for a long time. But apparently I missed a bunch of their books! It was before I religiously used Goodreads and kept track of what I read so I bypassed several of their novels thinking I'd already read them but I hadn't. This was one of them.

It was a page-turner! Suspense from beginning to end. The story was an adventure story--kind of a cross between Indiana Jones and a book about explorers to a new land. I haven't read many maritime adventure/survival stories and this was a great one that made me want to read more in this genre. I liked the characters, I was excited to finish the book and wanted to read more.

I went back and re-read this after reading the sequel to this book. I have to say that the authors did a good job blending the two as I hardly felt a disconnect despite me reading #2 and then #1 (out of order), and #2 was written a long time later.

I first read this book a long time ago and had forgotten all of it so it was pretty much a new book to me. I liked it a lot because it was easy to read and get into. Even though I knew the ending, I liked reading all about the discovery and the transportation of the meteorite. The action was fast and there were no slow or boring parts. I wasn't a fan of the the Chilean commander as I felt his behavior was not realistic but overall I enjoyed the book.