First published in 1997 and re-released in a revised and
expanded edition in 2005, Meg A Novel of Deep Terror is the first entry in
Steve Alten’s Meg series. The main core of the story presented revolves around
a disgraced former aquanaut named Jonas Taylor who was doing top secret dives
for the US Navy.
The book’s prologue starts in the Late Cretaceous period
where a herd of duckbilled dinosaurs called Shantungosaurus which are attacked
by a Tyrannosaurus on a shoreline while they are foraging for food. As the
Tyrannosaurus chases a pair that breaks away from the herd and flee into the
sea, it becomes entrapped in the muddy sea floor, where it is swiftly and
brutally killed by a Megalodon after the pair of Shantungosaurus escape back to
the beach.
Then the book goes ahead to the present day where our
protagonist Jonas Taylor is giving a lecture to a packed auditorium of over 600
people at the Scripps Institute about the Megalodon. Jonas continues his
presentation by showcasing a few Megalodon teeth and addressing theories about
the circumstances of the creature’s disappearance from the world’s oceans
ranging from falling temperatures to prey becoming smaller and faster making it
harder for Megalodon to feed. An elderly man then raises his hand to ask Jonas
what is his theory on how Megalodon disappeared to the majority of the
audience’s unanimous agreement and Jonas responds by referring to his thoughts
which differ to what many others in the same of study think.
As the lecture continues, Jonas’s wife Maggie and best
friend Bud Harris enter the auditorium and quietly take two empty seats due to
Jonas running behind schedule for an award ceremony that Maggie is due to
attend for a journalism piece on the Save the Whales campaign. After leaving
the auditorium and heading to the award ceremony venue, Jonas and Maggie argue
while Bud defuses the tension which temporally stops but builds up again during
the ceremony when Jonas has too much to drink and sees Bud dancing with Maggie
while groping her buttocks with some “help” from Maggie herself to which Jonas
punches Bud in response and leaving to go outside to clear his head.
While outside, Jonas is approached by Terry Tanaka who was
also at his lecture and offers him a ride home while asking him to come with
her to Monterey to meet with her father Masao Tanaka who is an old friend of
Jonas and needs his help in recovering a damaged U.N.I.S. (Unmanned Nautical Informational
Submersible) which is part of a joint project between Masao’s Tanaka Institute
and JAMSTEC (The Japanese Marine Sciences Technology Center) where the Tanaka
Institute is to provide JAMSTEC with 25 U.N.I.S. robots to monitor the seafloor
to detect seismic activity along the 125 mile stretch of the underwater canyon
known as the Mariana Trench in exchange for funding for Masao’s dream project
of a whale lagoon which would be connected to the ocean by means of steel doors
where whales could swim inside and out whenever they want and give birth and
raise their young.
Terry also tells Jonas that a large number of other U.N.I.S.
have ceased transmitting following the unit in a photo she had shown him
earlier in their conversion. Because of the U.N.I.S. going offline, JAMSTEC
cuts the funding of the whale lagoon which in turn forced Masao to send his
most experienced pilot which is his own son DJ Tanaka down to investigate and
recover one of the U.N.I.S. for examination.
Jonas then accompanies Terry the next morning to the Tanaka Institute
where Masao greets them and takes him into the projection room where footage of
a U.N.I.S. is being reviewed by Alphonse DeMarco, Masao’s chief engineer.
During part of the footage review, Jonas sees a fuzzy white triangular object
which is blown up and looks like a tooth and Masao knowing what happened to
Jonas seven years before gives Jonas the opportunity to return to the Mariana
Trench along with DJ to recover the object and confront his fears.
When I first picked up 'Meg' I must admit I had no idea what I was in for, but the cover looked thrilling enough to spark my interest. After reading it I think that Meg is a superb thriller from front cover to back cover. It was only one of a few books I can admit to not wanting to put down at any point.
The author Steve Alten has clearly done a lot of research
and it does show throughout the book especially during an exposition scene such
as Jonas’s paleontology lecture near the beginning of the book or the scenes
when Jonas is explaining to the others to catch the shark how the shark hunts
and how they are going to catch it works well but when Alten is using this
heavily scientific terminology in descriptive passages it just reads far too
chunkily. Thankfully this is not a consistent feature throughout the novel but
does bog down a few sections.
However there are some points and inconsistencies that I
feel I must address and these are:
- The front cover and prologue of the book show and describe a Megalodon killing and devouring a T-Rex
While the idea of a 65ft long shark attacking and killing
the tyrant lizard king does give us the readers a good sense of the creature’s
power and establishes its status as Lord & Master of the sea, it is wrong.
The earliest discovered Megalodon by means of carbon dating a specimen’s teeth
puts it at the late Oligocene or 28 million years ago while dinosaurs like
T-Rex went extinct at 65 million years ago leaving roughly 37 million years
apart making it impossible for these two creatures to ever meet.
- The characterization of the female characters
The female characters presented in the book are shown in a
somewhat misogynistic and sexist light. This is something I didn’t expect to
read in a contemporary novel like this and I personally think that Steve Alten
does not share this as his personal views on women but I also sense that he may
have had some difficulty writing female characters here but they do become
better and more interesting with each entry.
- Masao Tanaka
My nitpick here is less
to do with his characterization and more a flaw in his character back-story. From
the moment he is introduced comes across as a slightly stereotypical, aged
Japanese businessman, he speaks using good and fluent English but interspersed
with Japanese terminology such as referring to Jonas as "Taylor-san"
and when angry reverts back into full Japanese. He is by no means offensive and
is in fact one of Alten's better rounded characters. But it is later in the
book when we are told Masao's back story where things fall apart. We discover
that during the second World War Masao, then six years old, and his parents
were living in America and taken into a Japanese internment camp after the
attack on Pearl Harbor. In this camp his parents died, he was then adopted and
raised by an American couple in America. Surely a character that was raised in America
by American parents from the age of six years old would not come across as a
slightly stereotypical Japanese businessman, who speaks with Japanese anachronisms
in a way that suggests a Japanese accent.
- The incident onboard the Sea Cliff
But putting these minor nitpicks aside, Meg a Novel of Deep
Terror is overall a thrilling read and has great character development and the
journey into the Mariana Trench is written with absolute atmospheric genius,
the terrifying abyss closes in around our characters along with the fear of the
things that swim out in the blackness. The main action and attack sequences are
written with verve and frenetic attention to detail. But I think Alten's best
achievement in this book is the Megalodon itself, in it he has created a
creature that is singularly beautiful and elegant but yet horrifying at the
same time a thing that can really capture our most primal of fears.
The book itself is a
must for anyone remotely interested with the ocean and sharks and a definite
for any reader who wants a superb thriller. The last thirty or so pages of the
book are pure thrilling action which lead to an amazing climax. I totally
recommend this book, it is a great read and a true 'Page Turner'.
Meg A Novel of Deep Terror is available in paperback,
hardback, in all e-book formats, audiobook + CD.
No comments:
Post a Comment