Meg Hell's Aquarium Review

(Video Review)

Meg Hell’s Aquarium

Released in 2009, Meg Hell’s Aquarium is the fifth entry in Steve Alten’s Meg series. Set four years after the events of Primal Waters where we find Jonas Taylor back working at the Tanaka Institute closely with the recaptured Angel.

The book’s prologue begins in the Philippine Sea where the book explains the geography of the area through history as well as the evolution of life present too. Then the book focuses on a lone Megalodon who is revealed to be Scarface the vicious male who Michael Maren tried to use to get his revenge on Jonas with in Primal Waters. Scarface has abandoned his old hunting ground in the Mariana Trench to stakeout the Western Mariana Trough to search for a meal despite having killed a juvenile whale shark.

Scarface then picks up a strange object through his ampullae of Lorenzini and investigates the faint electrical field which turns out to be a World War II Japanese destroyer and after determining that it is inedible, Scarface moves on eventually entering the Western Mariana Ridge and soon picks up reverberations in the water which takes him to a hole in the sea floor about 400 feet across. As Scarface circles the void, A 68 foot Leedsichthys rises out of the gap as Scarface attacks and drives his hyperextended jaws into the giant and as Scarface becomes preoccupied and distracted by the kill, a pair of jaws about thirty two feet emerge from the gap and close on Scarface’s caudal fin reducing it to mincemeat and snapping his twin claspers off.

Scarface recovers from the sudden attack and sees the 122 feet long Pliosaur fully emerge from the gap which keeps its distance due to Scarface’s fearsome jaws but is locked onto the stream of blood pouring into the surrounding water.  The pliosaur then disappears into the darkness with a quick thrust of its front flippers and banks round and attacks again and Scarface is heavily injured and after about twenty minutes of being interlocked with each other, Scarface dies from his wounds.

Meanwhile at the Monterey Peninsula Airport, we find Jonas Taylor waiting outside Gate B with his now twenty four year old daughter Dani for his son David’s plane to land and let out passengers and to pass the time they resume talk about their own choices of music. Eventually David appears from the baggage claim exit and tosses his stuff into the Lexus Sudan and climbs in. As Jonas drives onto the car towards Highway 68, he brings up the subject of football to David on seeing his jersey and that the coach who called their home lost two wide-outs because of injuries to which David replies that his football days ended with high school.

Dani then points out Jonas’ now snowy white hair to David who remembers his father still being gray from the last time he had seen him and the conversion moves to Jonas talking to David about opportunities in marine biology internships including a recent sale of the Manta Ray with the Naval Warfare Center partly due to a piloting demonstration that David had partook in. This leads David to say that the Vice Admiral mentioned that they could use a good trainer hinting that Jonas could take the position but Jonas turns down the idea because of his enjoyment of working with the Megs and that they needed special care.

David jokes about how Angel’s “pups” who are now larger than an adult Great White after Jonas make them sound like they are a litter of cocker spaniels and the conversion touches on the subject of “the sisters” . Dani states that while all five pups shared the same womb, the three “runts” are nothing compared with Lizzy & Belle who are just as vicious as their mother Angel as Jonas turns off Highway 68 and south on Highway 1.

After the subject of David’s breakup with his girlfriend is brought up, David says it was because she was getting too serious in the relationship which put him off her with Dani saying she didn’t like her much either then David asks how his mother Terry is doing and Dani replies that she is stressed out due to an animal rights group called R.A.W. (Release Animals to the Wild) wanting the Megs released and members of the groups have been doing things like slashing tyres of employee’s cars which made Jonas hire a security firm to deal with the problem.

Jonas then talks about how the pens are too small for the Megs and no more expansions can be made at the Tanaka Institute along the coast because of the State Assembly but they offer 600 acres in Bakersfield as an alternative. Jonas then mentions a meeting he and Mac are to have with Emaar Properties out of the United Arab Emirates about a new state of the art aquarium and hotel in Dubai which presents an opportunity of them taking one or more of the Meg pups. Before the meeting takes place however two incidents occur the first being where Angel goes berserk and this results in Dani getting injured and a guest feeder is bitten in half after the swell of water created by Angel’s rampage pulls him from the A frame into the southern part of the tank.

The second incident is when Angelica, one of the “runts” is suddenly attacked by the “sisters” Lizzy and Belle and after staff manage to separate them and get Angelica into a transport net to move her into the medic pool to treat the wounds on her pectoral fin and left flank, however before Angelica can be moved into the medic pool having just been tranquilized Belle attacks again and tears a huge hole in her abdomen resulting in the Meg’s death.

While Terry goes on Good Morning America to address the accident with Angel, Jonas and Mac meet with the entourage from Dubai including Fiesal bin Rashidi, the first cousin to the crown prince and the CEO of Emaar Properties. During the lengthy discussion, a series of hand-drawn sketches are presented to Jonas and Mac depicting creatures such as the Kronosaurs that Jonas encountered during his last trip to the Mariana Trench among other species once thought extinct and Jonas recognises who drew the images as Dr Michael Maren the ichthyologist who tried to kill Jonas using Scarface.

Following the drawings, Jonas and Mac are presented with Maren’s research data and an offer of purchasing the two surviving Meg “runts” Mary-Kate & Ashley, a dozen of the Institute’s new Manta Ray submersibles and the employ of Jonas and the staff to help capture the creatures in Maren’s drawings for the Dubai aquarium.

Jonas and Mac laugh at the idea of them going due to their experiences in the Mariana Trench and their dealings with Maren so they turn down their part in the deal despite the additional offer of five million dollars each for their participation in the venture. The meeting ends with the Dubai entourage leaving but one who turns out to be the crown prince in disguise speaking with Jonas and Mac about the deal further and Jonas offers that David would show him the Manta Ray. David decides that a ride is better than a demonstration taking the prince with him and puts the Manta Ray through its paces which by the end impresses the prince so much that he offers David the job that Jonas and Mac both turned down and he accepts.

Having read all of the previous entries in the MEG series in order, I found it hard to fathom just how Steve Alten could take up from where Primal Waters left off. But yes he surprised me with Hell’s Aquarium which returns the series to form from the ridiculousness of Primal Waters. The vivid detail of the Meg’s sensory perception which is now a staple of the series returns as well as the recap for the three previous books is present for newcomers to the series to catch up which makes the book work as a standalone title fairly well.

However there are flaws present and they are as follows.

• Continuity Issues:

This first flaw concerns the age of the characters namely Dani and David Taylor considering that Hell’s Aquarium is set four years after the events of Primal Waters where David and Dani were fourteen and eighteen respectively while in Hell’s Aquarium where they are somehow now twenty years old and twenty four when they should be eighteen and twenty two. Personally I think this may just be an oversight by the author but thought I would mention it.

• Female Characters:

Most of the female cast in Hell’s Aquarium are presented poorly again with the exceptions of Terry, Mac’s wife Trish and surprisingly Dani who seems to have grown as a person in leaps and bounds since Primal Waters but still has holds onto her gangsta music preference. The others are presented as either mentally unstable, major teases, psychotic or downright stupid and generally have bigger breasts than IQs which some readers will find to be misogynistic but personally I found to be ultimately tiresome.

• Level of Detail:

This is another personal issue I have where the author describes the weight, size, lifting power, construction and tensile strength of every single piece of equipment in the book. I didn't know whether to be impressed or just annoyed by this aspect of Hell’s Aquarium mostly due to the explanations taking up sizeable pieces of a chapter which reduces the amount of story progression. Overall to the casual reader, this makes the book overly technical which maybe off-putting whereas those interested in sea exploration will absolutely love it.

• Story Direction:

While Hell’s Aquarium is a step above the previous book Primal Waters, it does suffer from similar problems like the prologue which reads like an essay on tectonic plates. Like with the previous entry Primal Waters, Hell’s Aquarium is written in the present tense over the past tense style of the first two books in the series but this time around the flow of the story is considerably better which makes a better read overall.

Steve Alten ups the ante yet again with Hell’s Aquarium with the return of Angel along with her five pups which all have their own personalities and group dynamic where the three runts don’t clash with each other while the “sisters” Lizzy & Belle form a sort-of symbiotic predatory relationship between them with Belle acting as the brawn to Lizzy's brains. Also introduced is a large menagerie of other creatures including the Kronosaurs and the new Liopleurodon hinted from Primal Waters to be the rival to the Megs.

Like with its predecessor Primal Waters, the story is split across the main focus with David going to Dubai to work at the new aquarium being financed by the Prince and the subplots of Jonas dealing the day to day problems with Angel and her brood and the activists of the group R.A.W. who are using the incidents at the Institute to push their agenda.

Hell’s Aquarium acts as a passing of the torch where we see Jonas’ son David quickly becoming the main character whereas Jonas is adjusted into a secondary role. Overall Hell’s Aquarium is an entertaining read and a welcome addition to the Meg series and the best way that I can sum this up is by saying there's a fantastic sense of dynasty and tradition, continuity of life and the interaction between the generations on both sides. 

Me as well as other followers of the series will invested a lot of time with the Taylors and their travails with Angel and her brood, and the masterstroke of Hell's Aquarium is in acknowledging that in-between toothsome adventures, time moves on, people change, and life keeps dealing new cards making this entry as enthralling as The Trench and steers the series into the uncharted waters of infinite possibility.

Meg Hell’s Aquarium is available in paperback, hardback and e-book formats.