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Editorial Review |
Meg
- Book Review,
by Steve Alten
From Library Journal
Carcharodon megalodon, prehistoric ancestors of the shark, survive in the abyss, trapped in place by seven miles of frigid ocean water. Paleontologist Jonas Taylor, helping a friend recover scientific sensing units that have been mysteriously damaged in the ocean trench, watches helplessly as the "Meg" that destroys his friend's capsule is then ripped to shreds by its mate?who then migrates to the surface. The female Meg is pregnant and hungry and far too large to be contained. This first novel offers nonstop excitement, as Taylor and other scientists try to corral the beast, while idiotic tourists and news crews flock to the scene to watch. Only Taylor understands the size, power, and ferocity of the Meg. Meg is slated to become a Disney movie, and there should be immense demand. Buy multiple copies.-?Marylaine Block, St. Ambrose Univ. Lib., Davenport, Ia.Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Entertainment Weekly
Wistfully, one recalls the licentious preppies ... duly punished in Jaws. Their '90s counterparts: grim, Crichton-esque lab coats, whom one is not really sorry to see gobbled by the great white shark's fearsome ancestor, Carcharodon megalodon.
From Booklist
Who would believe the old ploy can still hook 'em? Doubleday, that's who. Twenty-two years ago, the house published Peter Benchley's Jaws, which Steven Spielberg turned into his career-launching movie, which spawned film sequels aplenty, which spurred Benchley to try the trick again (Beast [1991], in which the bogey from the brine was a humongous squid) and again (White Shark [1994], in which the monster turned out to be a Nazi!). And now . . . this: an exaggeration--in scale and carnage--of all the above, with a Carcharodon megalodon (a really BIG shark) doing the romping and chomping. Supposedly 100,000 years extinct, the meg, as everybody in the book calls it, is actually, as our hero Jonas Taylor (sort of a paleo-ichthyological Indiana Jones) suspects, still alurk at the bottom of the Marianas Trench in the western Pacific, where the heat of volcanic vents maintains a livable warmth, and six miles of lethally cold water above that environment keep the 60-foot fish from the surface. Keep it, that is, until early in this yarn that seems more novelization of a screenplay than novel. The action is nonstop, the characters are all pumped and touchy (even the women suffer from testosterone overload), and the dialogue is risibly cliched. But is it a hoot, anyway? Yep, and guess what? Disney's filming it. Ray Olson
From Kirkus Reviews
As Jaws meets Jurassic Park, Meg (short for megladon) brings us a 60-foot, 20-ton prehistoric shark with a nine-foot-wide mouth that is likely to gobble up bestseller lists, as well as reappear in 1998 as a summer blockbuster. In rather characterless prose, debut novelist Alten's well-groomed story rockets like a pre-edited filmscript from event to event. But the author's love of his title character is clear, as he keeps his Lord and Master of the Sea, a female Carcharodon Megalodon, frequently front and center. Seven years ago, Professor Jonas Taylor, a paleontologist and deep-sea submersible pilot, first saw such a shark, thought to be extinct, while diving more than seven miles down in the Marianas Trench. During the Ice Age, members of the species, it turns out, took refuge in the hot thermals on the ocean bottom. Lethally cold water above has kept from them resurfacing. Jonas's first encounter cost two lives, and has burdened him with profound guilt. He goes back down to the abyss anyway, accompanied by Masao Tanaka, the owner of a huge aquarium on the California coast. When a male Megalodon gets entrapped in steel cables in the trench, he's attacked by a pregnant female; she follows the male to the surface, surviving the journey, and discovers a warm new world, filled with varied, easy, hot-blooded prey. Clearly, the shark is an ecological disaster, especially when she gives birth to three more of her kind. Taylor and Tanaka, however, don't want to destroy the shark but rather to harness her drugged body and haul it into confinement. This means some vastly dangerous close work with her once she's located, with Taylor hovering about the monster in a submersible that becomes the instrument of an utterly amazing climax. A female offspring in captivity at story's end guarantees a sequel. Weightless characters on a choppy sea--but hellishly riveting. (First printing of 250,000; film rights to Disney; Literary Guild main selection) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
"Two words: Jurassic Shark."
--Los Angeles Times
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Book Review |
Meg
- Book Reviews,
by Steve Alten
Meg FROM THE PUBLISHER In a top-secret dive into the Pacific Ocean's deepest canyon, Jonas Taylor found himself face-to-face with the largest and most ferocious predator in the history of the animal kingdom. The sole survivor of the mission, Taylor is haunted by what he's sure he saw but still can't prove exists -- Carcharodon megalodon, the massive mother of the great white shark. The average prehistoric Meg weighs in at twenty tons and could tear apart a Tyrannosaurus rex in seconds. Written off as a crackpot, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, Taylor refuses to forget the depths that nearly cost him his life. With a Ph.D. in paleontology under his belt, Taylor spends years theorizing, lecturing, and writing about the possibility that Meg still feeds at the deepest levels of the sea. But it takes an old friend in need to get him to return to the water, and a hotshot female submarine pilot to dare him back into a high-tech miniature sub. Diving deeper than he ever has before, Taylor will face terror like he's never imagined, and what he finds could turn the tides bloody red until the end of time.
FROM THE CRITICS Library Journal Jaws redux: In this debut, no one believes that deep-sea submersible pilot Jonas Taylor has had a nasty encounter with a Megaladonone of those 60' babies said to be the progenitors of today's great white sharkuntil something huge repeatedly snarls up the cables of another deep-sea probe.
Kirkus Reviews As Jaws meets Jurassic Park, Meg (short for megladon) brings us a 60-foot, 20-ton prehistoric shark with a nine-foot-wide mouth that is likely to gobble up bestseller lists, as well as reappear in 1998 as a summer blockbuster. In rather characterless prose, debut novelist Alten's well-groomed story rockets like a pre-edited filmscript from event to event. But the author's love of his title character is clear, as he keeps his Lord and Master of the Sea, a female Carcharodon Megalodon, frequently front and center. Seven years ago, Professor Jonas Taylor, a paleontologist and deep-sea submersible pilot, first saw such a shark, thought to be extinct, while diving more than seven miles down in the Marianas Trench. During the Ice Age, members of the species, it turns out, took refuge in the hot thermals on the ocean bottom. Lethally cold water above has kept from them resurfacing. Jonas's first encounter cost two lives, and has burdened him with profound guilt. He goes back down to the abyss anyway, accompanied by Masao Tanaka, the owner of a huge aquarium on the California coast. When a male Megalodon gets entrapped in steel cables in the trench, he's attacked by a pregnant female; she follows the male to the surface, surviving the journey, and discovers a warm new world, filled with varied, easy, hot-blooded prey. Clearly, the shark is an ecological disaster, especially when she gives birth to three more of her kind. Taylor and Tanaka, however, don't want to destroy the shark but rather to harness her drugged body and haul it into confinement. This means some vastly dangerous close work with her once she's located, with Taylor hovering about the monster in a submersible that becomes theinstrument of an utterly amazing climax. A female offspring in captivity at story's end guarantees a sequel. Weightless characters on a choppy sea—but hellishly riveting.
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