Meg Primal Waters Review

 (Video Version)

Meg Primal Waters

Released in 2004, Meg Primal Waters is the forth entry in Steve Alten’s Meg series. Meg Primal Waters takes place eighteen years after the events of The Trench where we find our protagonist Jonas Taylor now nearly 64 years old and struggling with providing for himself and his wife Terry and their extended family.

The book’s prologue starts 18,000 years ago during the Late Pleistocene where the book explains about the environmental changes that took place since the last Ice Age and the continental shifts which would eventually form our modern world. All the changes in the climate in turn then start to affect the migratory routes of all manner of animal species. The book then goes to focus on a juvenile whale shark feeding in the Pacific Ocean while completely unaware that it is being stalked by a 57ft female Megalodon which is nearly to term with its pregnancy.

The female Megalodon goes to ready herself to attack the whale shark when directly underneath, another Megalodon appears from the depths forcing the female to break off while the male Megalodon proceeds to eviscerate its freshly killed prey. The female hangs around till nightfall and eventfully leaves to search for more food to feed herself and her undernourished unborn young but only finding prey no bigger than a tortoise over the course of three days and the famished Meg then arrives at an island atoll.

In the present day in Tampa Bay, Florida here we find our protagonist Jonas Taylor writing his memoirs recollecting the events of how he had killed the Megalodon that had risen from the Mariana Trench twenty two years previously by his wife Terry’s insistence since he quit working for the Tanaka Institute and the once never-ending flow of requests for him to talk at various venues has dried up. Jonas’s concentration is broken when a bill collector from American Express calls and inquires about a mailed check which results in Jonas putting the receiver down after telling the collector to check back the following week and then returning to writing when his concentration is broken again and this time it’s by the gangsta rap coming from upstairs.

Jonas then heads to his daughter’s room and after banging on the door repeatedly, an angry 17 year old Danielle Taylor answers the door and the encounter between them ends bitterly and Jonas then checks in with his son 14 year old David Taylor who is more interested in playing a game based off his father’s encounters with the Megs but always plays as Angel because “it’s more fun” than the mini-sub. Terry arrives home from shopping and Jonas helps to bring them in but in doing so sees the damage to Dani’s car and discovering a bag of marijuana hidden under the seat which adds to his already painful migraine.

Meanwhile at the Tanaka Institute in Monterey, a very elderly Masao Tanaka now at 82 years old looks out at the lagoon which was once going to be his realised lifelong dream but in pursuing it, he had depleted his family fortune and mortgaged his children’s futures and which the funds ran out he accepted a contract with JAMSTEC in exchange for twenty five UNIS drones to be deployed along the Mariana Trench as an early warning system for earthquakes. However with a large number of the drones suddenly ceasing transmissions and the threat of losing the partnership of JAMSTEC forced Masao to enlist Jonas’s help in retrieving one of the UNIS drones to assess the damage and what caused it. 

This leads to the attack on his son DJ’s sub by a Megalodon and ultimately trapping it in the steel cable attached to the sub itself where it is attacked and killed by a larger pregnant female Megalodon which leaves the Mariana Trench to wreak havoc across the ocean and also giving birth to three pups which only one survived and is captured after Jonas killed its mother and placed in the whale lagoon for daily shows. However a series of court cases from the kin of the Megalodon’s victims severely cripple and affect the Tanaka Institute which forced Masao to sell to the energy mogul Benedict Singer and with his death aboard the Benthos, the Tanaka Institute’s ownership returned to Masao.

Three years after Angel’s escape, the lagoon doors of the lagoon were opened again and for their original purpose of acting as a protected cove for whales to enter and birth their young. But whales refuse to enter due to being “spooked” by Angel’s lingering presence. 

Masao took a loan from Jonas for draining and scrubbing the tank to remove Angel’s scent to no avail and now deep in debt and options becoming scarce, Masao agrees to lease the facility to SeaWorld to house about six of their Orcas. However despite the whales being born and bred in captivity the second the whales were placed inside the waters of the lagoon, they panic and eventually with nowhere to beach they bash their heads against the doors desperately to escape and two of them died as a result and the contract with SeaWorld ended with the incident.

Now Masao is desperate to sell off the facility which is becoming harder with everything that has happened and the costs just to maintain it has wiped out his pension and the savings of several potential buyers following the collapse of the stock market. This also leads to Masao getting a loan from Dietsch Brothers who also want to buy the land to turn the beachfront and lagoon into “million dollar” condos and a high-end shopping marina. Masao refuses on the basis of their offer being too low and the fact he doesn’t trust the brothers.

Meanwhile Jonas and his family attend the Venice Beach Shark Tooth Festival where Jonas is to give a talk which is one of the main events. Once Jonas begins his talk, Dani leaves for a walk round and eventually coming across a stand where contestants for a TV show called DareDevils is placed where she meets and talks with Fergie a member of one of the teams taking part in the new season when they are interrupted by Jennie another member of the same team who gives Dani a little attitude concerning a plane jump that Fergie is to take part in for promoting the show and after some goading from Jennie, Dani agrees to also participate in the stunt.

Back on the ground after selling some leftover signed pictures of Angel when she was in the lagoon, Jonas is approached by the producer of DareDevils Erik Hollander who asks Jonas to be a guest co-host for the new season of DareDevils to add a “colour” commentary and after a lengthy talk with his wife Terry and in need of income (offered $150,000 for the job) plus the lure of recapturing some degree of youth is too hard to pass up and Jonas accepts but under a condition set by Terry that their daughter Dani goes with him. But little do any of them know that Angel after eighteen years has returned from the Mariana Trench into surface waters.

So like its predecessors, Primal Waters throws us back into the adventures of Jonas Taylor, his family and the ever present Angel, the Megalodon that we were first introduced to back in the previous book The Trench. Also back in Primal Waters is the detail of the Meg’s sensory perception and the attack sequences which add a great level of depth and are always welcome and like with the last book, Steve Alten ups the ante again by having three Megs including the fearsome Angel which means a higher body is sure to follow as a result. However the book seems to have more flaws than the previous entries in the series.

The flaws are as follows:

• Story Direction:

While the first two books were written in the past tense, Primal Waters is written in the present tense and personally at times, I found that the story itself felt like it didn’t flow as well the previous books did. On another aspect here is the reality TV plotline which is a change from the usual “shark escapes and goes on killing spree” which is great because repeating the same story over and over makes it a stale and ultimately boring experience. The reality TV inclusion in the plot here seems rather weak and somewhat cliché in this age where such entertainment has a large influence in network programming.

• Weak Characters:

Now in Primal Waters, we do get a larger cast of characters than the previous books but the majority of them make us as readers not care about them. I’ll start with Jonas and Terry here by saying while it would be natural for both of them to have some degree of PTSD (especially Terry) after what they went through onboard the Benthos and Benedict Singer. However their portrayal in Primal Waters is mostly a caricature of them where despite the fact that they are both intelligent, they seem to know nothing about raising their kids. While Jonas is overly strict at times while at others lazy or even half-hearted, Terry is overprotective and doesn’t like taking any risks which is a complete 180 twist on her character in The Trench which I was blindsided by. Moving on to the kids David and Danielle Taylor, firstly they are a stereotypical take on teenagers with both not really interested in what their parents say.

However David is the lesser of two evils because he is developed well as the book goes on while Dani is an overdone cliché of a sulky teenager, she is self-absorbed, foolish, devoid of respect for her father or anyone else for that matter, has the morals of an alley cat, and the IQ comparable to the whole cast of Geordie Shore. Her reaction to getting caught naked with Fergie an Australian stuntman by her father is to show no degree of shame, but rather disgust and then berating her father for interrupting her. All of this makes it really difficult to care for her even when she’s in danger of being eaten by a Megalodon.

Next is the entire cast of DareDevils, all of them have similar personalities and moral codes so they are all interchangeable and unmemorable so overall they add nothing to this story other than add to the body count.

And lastly we come to the antagonist Michael Maren who was a minor antagonist in The Trench working for Celeste Singer. While in The Trench he seemed to be more fleshed out despite his limited appearances, here in Primal Waters he appears to be a now one dimensional character with only the most basic of intentions which is to get revenge on Jonas mostly due to jealousy and partly because of Celeste’s death and also on Mac because he winded Maren and then tied him up and proceeded to dump him about 40 miles from Bethel in western Alaska. Because of this in Primal Waters, Maren has lost his toes on his feet as a result of frostbite and later on he tries to pull off a hearts and mind stunt where Maren while on camera appears to want to save the DareDevils from an attacking Megalodon which in reality is being somewhat controlled by Maren himself to kill Jonas with a drone off-camera while also trying to portray Jonas as insane.

• Time Skip:

The whole 18 years later aspect of Primal Waters doesn’t seem to work out well. David is still listening to a Walkman, TV shows are still shooting in film, and Jonas, who is supposed to be in his 60’s sure doesn’t act his age at times.

So despite these flaws, Meg Primal Waters is still an entertaining read with a much more brisker pace and across three different locales with Jonas & Dani with the DareDevils, David Taylor and the freshly reformed James “Mac” Mackreides (who has become an alcoholic and has a strained friendship with Jonas) searching for Angel and Terry investigating attacks on whales on the Eastern Coast which keeps things interesting throughout. Fans of the deep will be disappointed that all the action stays near to the surface of the ocean this time around, but personally I think the change of scenery was a good thing. This book had all the same elements as the last Meg book, yet it was a story that stands well on its own, and it’s anything but a retread of The Trench.

On top of the changes is the inclusion of two more Megs beside the returning Angel. The two new Megs are both male (one being the "runt" of one of Angel's previous litters) and their introduction adds variety instead of just focusing on Angel. The first new Meg is called Scarface due to having a facial scar from a fight with another Meg over territory and is every bit as vicious as Angel herself while the other unnamed Meg is more wary but still dangerous. We also get a hint from Maren that there is something even bigger than the Megs lurking in the trench.

Overall a great continuation of the Meg series. I truly enjoyed Primal Waters and the twists/turns that it had for me as the reader. Mr Alten does an excellent job of putting you squarely in the action making you feel, see and smell as if you were right there with the characters.

Meg Primal Waters is available in paperback & hardback.

Godzilla Awakening Graphic Novel Unboxing/Review

Another unboxing video and this time, I look at Godzilla Awakening the graphic novel set before the events of the movie.

Godzilla The Art of Destruction Art Book Unboxing/Review

So here it is.
My very first unboxing and its...
Well you've seen the title of this post already :) so here's the video. Enjoy

Godzilla 2014 Vlog & Review

Warning!

(Both videos in this post contain spoilers for Godzilla (2014). If you do not to hear spoilers, there is a link on the review video to skip them)

On May 15th, I went to the Vue cinema in Cheshire Oaks to see the new Godzilla movie and I was so excited to see it and in the video below is a summery of what happened on my way there and my review and overall thoughts of the movie itself. I also did a follow-up on this video which I'll put under the review/vlog.

Quick Catch-up

Been somewhat neglecting my blog because I've been putting some time into my YouTube channel and other thing so here's a quick catch-up and it goes as follows:

• Went to Cheshire Oaks to see Godzilla (2014)
• YouTube account has been verified and now a partner :D
• Writing more for my own novel while writing reviews for various books and other stuff (soon to be featured here in written form & video versions on YouTube.
• Done my first two unboxing videos :)
• Got a job in Marks & Spencers ( I start next month.)

And in a nutshell, that's everything that has happened and fair to say that my life is on the up and everything is awesome.

The Trench Review

 (Video Version)

The Trench Review

Released in 1999, The Trench is the third entry in Steve Alten’s Meg series. The Trench takes place four years after the events of Meg A Novel of Deep Terror where our protagonist Jonas Taylor is now married to Terry Tanaka and also working at the Tanaka Institute where he is looking after the only surviving Megalodon pup that was captured at the end of the last book and held in the whale lagoon.

The book’s prologue begins in the Mariana Trench with a submersible named the Proteus is scouting the floor for helium isotopes as the captain Barry Leace frets over the safety of his crew and takes the safe option of slowing the Proteus’s speed to avoid the chances of colliding with a black smoker (hydrothermal vent) which would make a breach in the titanium hull and the pressure change would kill everyone onboard. Tension arises between Barry and Ellis Richards, the team leader over the pace that the exploration is taking and going outside a projected timetable and delaying the Prometheus and Epimetheus submersibles from doing their assigned tasks.

On arriving at their designated coordinates, the crew begin to take samples from a vent near a clump of tubeworms and things go smoothly at first when a number of blips appear on the sonar screen heading toward the Proteus. Barry wants to cease operations and retreat to the safety of the Benthos which is six kilometres behind them while Richards refuses to retract the mechanical arms which are still collecting the samples and he is insistent on securing them onboard before the unknown life forms collide with the Proteus.

The blips become stronger and faster on the sonar and it indicates that the approaching objects are to be forty feet long and Barry then ignites the lateral thrusters which turns the Proteus counter-clockwise and almost tearing the mechanical arms off and loosing every sample collected in the process. He then takes the Proteus to its top speed of 1.8 knots in an effort to get within visual range of the Benthos when it goes quiet and it’s followed by a sudden jolt and the crew are thrown around from the impact.

As Barry tries to regain control of the Proteus only to discover that the controls are not responding and a plate of the hull is loosening from the attack but now the Benthos is now in sight so Barry puts out an emergency radio call for the Benthos to open its hanger doors while the geologist of the team Linda tells him that it takes five minutes for the Benthos to fill the chamber. A whistling sound then fills the cabin of the Proteus because the integrity of the plates and another heavy impact rocks the submersible.

Barry looks to the port glass where his head just struck and see a luminous crimson eye peering in from the other side. The whistling ceases when a pair of rivets shoot out into the cabin and Barry’s head implodes before they hit the floor.

Then the book brings us to our protagonist Jonas Taylor who wakes up from a night terror where he was back in the Mariana Trench where he in a Lexan pod and he spots another Lexan pod with Terry unconscious inside and he then looked down into the dark abyss and sees a Megalodon rising towards Terry’s pod and watches it engulf the pod. Jonas and Terry start to share an intimate moment after Terry manages to calm Jonas down when they are interrupted by a phone call from his assistant Manny at the Institute’s lagoon saying he needs his help immediately.

About 20 minutes later, Jonas arrives at the lagoon in time for the captured Megalodon’s 10AM feeding with a capacity crowd eagerly waiting in the stands surrounding the tank. After arriving, Jonas goes to the underground viewing area where the Megalodon is swimming at that moment, The Megalodon nicknamed “Angel” now fully grown is 75ft long making her larger than her mother as well as proving to be much more vicious presses her head against the side of the tank and focuses her cataract-gray eye onto Jonas but Angel then disappears and heads towards the canal where a large side of beef is attached to an A-frame above the lagoon. Angel explodes from the water taking the food in a single bite and severally bending the A-frame in the process. Jonas and Manny discuss Angel’s behavior when it’s pointed out that Angel has been ramming her head against the doors that lead outside to the open ocean and it becomes clear that she wants out!

After reading the first book, I jumped into this sequel with baited breath... and I wasn't disappointed.

The story begins with our hero from the first book Jonas Taylor and his life being in a right mess. After successfully killing the Megalodon in the first book, he captured her remaining offspring, a female pup to go and put on display at the Tanaka Institute. Jonas has now married his friend Masao's daughter Terry and everything seemed to be going great. Then lawsuits started to roll in with the families and friends of all the victims of the Megalodon began looking for compensation.

Jonas, Masao and the Tanaka Institute were easy targets because of their bold attempt to capture the Meg instead of just killing it and allowed the body count to rise. Jonas now is trapped working at the Institute displaying the nearly fully grown Megalodon named Angel to the public with nearly every penny received going straight into another compensation settlement. Jonas feels the strain from the trials and is haunted by the Megalodon, having re-occurring nightmares of how the beast will one day kill him.

This puts a great strain on his marriage to Terry and further disaster strikes when as Jonas has predicted Angel becomes too big to imprison at nearly 75ft, she is much larger then her mother was and eventually she smashes free from the Lagoon and enters the open ocean and Jonas is obligated by the Institutes owners to go after the Meg and re-capture her, but all is not quite as it seems.

Now sequels are often a tough thing to get right the questions are:

Can the second installment of a film series or book recapture the magic of the first, and still be fresh and also can it stand on its own if you don't know the first one.

Fortunately, Steve Alten's second outing in the Meg series does everything right. You get more of what was brilliant about the first book - the characters, the little marine biology lessons, the spectacular set-pieces of shark on human action as well as a general upping of stakes across the board  while also getting some exciting new ideas and concepts, some of which survive to take their place in the Meg universe, and some of which are devoured by the queen of the seas by the book's end.

If you thought the first book was a nice idea that had run its course after 400-odd pages, I say think again. The Trench still has some surprises for you.

However I do have a couple of things to nick pick as well as a few praises to address:

• Terry Tanaka

Personally I like how her character has grown and developed in the time between the first book and this one where she is a much stronger character than before and more willing to take action given the situations she is placed in throughout The Trench. Even before the events of The Trench, Jonas & Terry suffer great emotional trauma with the loss of their first child who died in the womb at 8 months and this is used by both antagonists Benedict and Celeste Singer to hurt her and the way Terry bounces back is nothing short of inspirational.

• Bin Laden

Surprised? I was too. Bin Laden is named in the book as one of Benedict’s financial backers for the expedition into the Mariana Trench to collect rocks which contain the rare gas Helium-3 in order to create fusion that can be weaponized. His inclusion here to me seems like it was just thrown in at the last minute as a means to make Benedict a more imposing and threatening antagonist.

• New creatures

This is not a bad thing because we now have a new threat which adds variety instead of just having the Meg and human characters. This also adds an element of mystery as to what else lives in the trench besides the Megalodons.

• Celeste Singer

I personally hated her so much. If you thought that Jonas’ wife from the last book Maggie was bad then Celeste Singer makes her look like the innocent girl next door. I can also extend this to Benedict who at times come off a bit as a one dimensional character instead of being the multi-leveled personality that he tries to present.

So in conclusion, The Trench overall I think this a great follow-up to Meg A Novel of Deep Terror with more character development, action, emotional drama and most surprising some elements of espionage worked into an already thrilling story. I won't spoil the ending but I will say this book had me hooked just like the first book. In fact after reading this book I straight away went to reading the third in the series Primal Waters.

So if you've read Meg by this book now, if you haven't get both you will not regret them.

The Trench is available in paperback, hardback, in all e-book formats, audiobook from all good book shops.

Meg A Novel of Deep Terror Review

(Video Version)

Meg A Novel of Deep Terror Review

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

My main problem with this plot point is that it is referred to constantly but never told in much detail throughout the novel, but I felt it was written like this in order to progress the story instead of it staying at a single point and making it receptive and stale. However this is all addressed in the prequel novel Meg Origins making this a mute point but I thought I’d talk about it anyway.

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.

Meg Origins Review

 

 (Video Review)

 Meg Origins Review 

Released in 2011, Meg Origins is chronologically the first in Steve Alten’s Meg series but it was written and released three years after Hell’s Aquarium (the forth installment/book) which was released in 2009. Meg Origins was penned as a thank you from the author for the support for the Meg series.

Meg Origins is a prequel set in the seven years prior to the events of Meg A Novel of Deep Terror where Jonas Taylor was at the height of his career as an aquanaut and working for the US Navy as a highly regarded and respected submersible pilot.

The book’s prologue starts 100 years before when the HMS Challenger discovers the deepest part of the Mariana Trench which is named the Challenger Deep after the ship itself. After dredging the bottom, the crew come cross fossilised Megalodon teeth and from looking from the specimens, they discuss the possibly of a Megalodon still being alive and during this leads to a sweet nod to Peter Benchley’s novel Jaws where one crew member says to another “ We’re gonna need a bigger boat!”

The story then goes to where Jonas wakes up from a startling dream and he’s called into the sick bay for a medical for an upcoming pre-dive for a forth descent. At this point, Jonas has already been on three previous dives and is mentally and psychically exhausted. The physician of record Frank Heller who is performing Jonas’s check up is pressed by the Commanding Officer Richard Danielson to allow Jonas to go on the forth dive despite his exhaustion. Jonas says this outright and directly to Danielson knowing his current condition, it would potentially compromise the mission and its crew but Danielson insists that Jonas “man up” after telling him to get some caffeine as well as the Antivert and the shot of B-12 prescribed by Heller for his vertigo and fatigue. 

Jonas argues his point about the conditions in the Marina Trench and about his backup pilot Royston being nowhere near ready for a dive at those depths. Danielson disagrees strongly and tells Jonas that he will be piloting the submersible and if he doesn’t, he will be issued a court martial and the backup Royston would replace him. Forty minutes later, Jonas is onboard the DSV Sea Cliff going through the pre-dive checklist before taking the dive into the Marina Trench and the encounter that will change his life forever.

Meg Origins is a short and sweet story. I came to reading it having just read and finished the first book Meg A Novel of Deep Terror. Although that it isn't a requirement to enjoy or understand it, what it does add is an extra level of closure to them. By itself, it tells the story of how several different factors came together at the same time to trigger the fateful encounter between Jonas Taylor and the Megalodon on his Navy dive onboard the Sea Cliff and the aftermath of the incident.

It brings back some familiar faces and fleshes out the major characters including the two scientists who were travelling with Jonas on the Sea Cliff at the time of the decent as well as Jonas’s best friend James “Mac Mackreides expanding on his military service and the events that lead to his discharge and confinement in the psychotic ward of the military where he meets Jonas. The story as a whole lends incredible emotional impact, and a lot of fill-in-the-gaps understanding, to the original story.

If you haven’t read any of Steve Alten’s books, Meg Origins would be a good place to start and give you as the reader an idea what to expect in the other entries in the Meg series as well as his other works.

Meg Origins is available only as an e-book but can be found in all e-books formats at about 99p (UK) or 99 cents (US) in price so a nice cheap novel for you to sink your teeth into.