Exciting, thrilling, great underwater scenes....This is a powerhouse of a thriller, much like JAWS was when first released. I loved this book,Alten gets you involved with the characters and builds suspense with every chatper. I was hooked from the first page...Highly recommended for what is aims to do, ENTERTAIN. I can't believe some of the negative reviews this has received, did we read the same book? ( )

This was a very scary book. The concept is frightening for it's plausibility. There are still unexplored places in our world and it is not just possible, but probable that some prehistoric species have survived in these regions. Therefore, the idea that, somewhere in our deepest oceans, Megalodon still hunts is not unrealistic and Meg is all the more frightening for that possibility. With plenty of suspense and lots of blood, this is a book that will keep you awake at night. ( )

An exciting idea given a pedestrian execution. Meg reads like a film treatment, although the film version has been in development hell for years. The characterizations are shallower than a wading pool, and it's very easy to get confused about who is currently getting chomped by the 62 ft. prehistoric shark. Alten's writing is just passable enough to keep the story moving without actually getting the reader involved. If you love water-borne adventure, you'll find this a quick read, and you may even like it—but outside of this small niche, most readers will struggle to get to the end. ( )

This excellent story teaches many scientific things while being a great novel. This book kept my attention the entire time. Alten writes kind of like Michael Crichton but on an oceanographic sense instead of physics and biology. ( )

Entertaining, if Shallow Read, January 28, 2007


I kind of came at Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror from the back end...that is to say that I recently read Alten's The Loch, and while flawed, it was entertaining so I thought I'd give this one a go, since I love the premise. I have to say that I was very shocked at the recycling he did with material from this book in the Loch. The premise here is Jonas Taylor was involved in some top-secret dive into the Mariana Trench which went horribly awry when he sees a giant shark and winds up as the sole survivor of the three man sub crew. Taylor, once a star of the submersible world becomes a laughing stock....viewed as little more than a crack pot suffering from PTSD by those in the scientific community, devoting 7 years to research on the Meg, writing several books and as we join the story is currently on the lecture circuit pimping his theory.

We are very quickly introduced to a bevy of characters including Maggie, Taylor's wife with aspirations to be a nationally known newscaster; Terry Tanaka the feisty new love interest who wants to be one of the boys, diving on the subs, but never develops into more than a damsel in constant distress; D.J., Terry's Brother who will be piloting one of the subs on the trip down into the trench; Bud, rich guy and "friend" of Taylor...but not for long; Masao Tanaka, Japanese business man with dreams of opening an Oceanographic Institute in Monterey and old friend of Taylor; Alphonse DeMarco, chief engineer; and Frank Heller, the doctor who declared Taylor fit for diving on his "top-secret" dive then turned around and placed all the blame for the accident squarely on Taylor's shoulders...an adversarial paring to be sure.

So, having set up the damaged hero, we move quickly into getting him back into a submersible and the Mariana Trench, the reason being that Masao, his long time friend is never going to realize his dream of opening the Oceanographic Institute due to the failure of some underwater seismic equipment he developed for JAMSTEC (who are funding the lagoon in return). It's up to Taylor and D.J. to figure out what's happening to the monitors and get things up and running again...and that's when all heck breaks loose! Once the author sets up this back story, the book takes off into a "B" action movie plot with barely believable situational suspense as Taylor and the others attempt to undo the damage they've done in leading the Meg to the surface resulting in non-stop, page-turning action! Ultimately, it's good for what it is...a light, entertaining read. This is not great literature...it's fiction that's meant to entertain and nothing more.

Overall...what is recycled from this book into The Loch...well, the "hero" us unable to dive, traumatized by a previous dive (check, used in The Loch); witch of a wife, well on her way to being an ex-wife (check), and a feisty female love interest who has the potential to be a strong character but winds up having to be saved over and over (check, also in the Loch)...what's really sad is that the characterization here is flat, one-dimensional, and lackluster (fleshed out only enough to get the story moving and never developed beyond that...they are the backdrop for the Meg action sequences, necessary only to keep the action moving)...but it's still better than what he wrote character-wise in The Loch. I didn't think it was possible for an author to get worse at creating characters, but it seems that is the case with Alten. In the end, this is the literature equivalent of spending two hours watching a movie on Sci-Fi...Meg's plot relies on a thin thread of scientific believability. That is to say that once you've committed yourself to the premise - a 60 foot megalodon rises from the Mariana Trench to terrorize the modern ocean - you've found your way to a fast-paced "B" movie of a book. Meg contains just about every cliché you find in an underwater suspense thriller...and while this book has been compared to Jurassic Park/Crichton's work...it's not anywhere near that good. What you do get here is a time wasting, entertaining, edge of your seat read for a few hours...and sometimes that just what you need. I give it three stars because I WAS entertained and really, that's what this type of book is supposed to do! I'll finish out the series just because I am the type who always finishes a book and if I've started a series, I finish it, but I doubt I'll ever feel compelled to pick up future writings by this author, he seems to recycle the same plot elements from book to book, just changing the "threat," this is formula writing and it's not even good formula writing. ( )