Steve Alten

If you drew up a checklist of the necessary components of a B-movie creature-feature, then Meg would tick pretty much every box.

Imperfect hero haunted by his past? Check ☑
Beautiful heroine who loathes the hero with every fibre of her being right up to the point where she realises that she's never loved anyone more in her life? Check ☑
Outrageous monster that no-one except the hero believes exists until it starts eating everyone? Check ☑
Comedy deaths of unlikeable characters introduced show more two minutes earlier? Check ☑
The hero surviving a suicide mission to slay the beast? Check ☑

Heck, while reading the book I couldn't help but be reminded of that magnum opus of creature features: Shark Attack 3: Megalodon. Don't misunderstand me, I'm aware that Meg predates Shark Attack 3 by some five or six years, but the presence of a few set pieces common to both works led me to compare the two and wonder why I delight in watching the latter while reading the former was more of a trawl. And I think I figured out why.

B-movies tend to be fun because they fall into the "so-bad-they're-good" category. Shark Attack 3 transcends such humdrumness, being so sublimely terrible and ridiculous that it becomes a work of art. The actor's ad-libs are left in the finished film, the human antagonists are bad people and worse actors, there's pretty much only one repeatedly used shot of the Megalodon, which is patently a shot of a great white shark crudely blown up in size. And so when someone rides their jet ski into the shark's mouth you can forgive how silly it is and rejoice in the moment.

Meg's greatest failing is, ironically, that it's not quite bad enough. Steve Alten seems to be trying to play the book straight: with pages of dialogue given over to dry scientific discussion of a Megalodon's ampullae of Lorenzini; with relatively minor plot points discussed repeatedly so that the reader knows that some incongruous plot detail was a clever point and not an error; when the protagonist dons a pair of night-vision goggles we have to be told that they work by "improving light amplification by using a coating of gallium arsenide on the photocathode of the intensifier." I get it, Steve, you did your research, and it's impressive, but with all this straight-lacery around, a few pages later when a surfer douchebag surfs straight into the Megalodon's mouth it's somehow not as much fun as the aforementioned jet-ski incident.

There are some problems with the writing as well, with Steve Alten apparently going to the same writing school as [a:Matthew Reilly|83714|Matthew Reilly|http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1309746050p2/83714.jpg]. Exclamations points abound. When someone who isn't expecting to be eaten by a sixty foot shark is unexpectedly eaten by a sixty foot shark I get that it's unexpected. I don't need an exclamation mark to tell me to be surprised. There's also a slew of those annoying line breaks mid-dramatic moment, sometimes two or three in a row, which I've never seen the point of. And my last gripe concerns a moment very early on. The first chapter starts strong, with a T-rex in the Jurassic age hunting a herd of Shantungosaurus. Seriously, if the whole book had been as awesome as a freaking T-rex hunting a pack of honest to goodness Shantungosaurus then it would've been a contender for three stars. But wait, there's more! The T-rex follows its quarry into the shallow coastal water only to get stuck in the loose sand. We're in four star territory now, ladies and gents. A hush descends as the hunter becomes the hunted and a shark the size of Texas shows up not for those pansy Shantungosaurus, but for the mother funking T-rex. A shark eating a T-rex is perhaps the greatest shark related thing ever, with the possible exception of a shark genetically spliced with an octopus, but that'd never happen. What could possibly ruin this moment of perfect literature? Only this: after thrusting us so thoroughly into the Jurassic age that I can almost hear the Procompsognathus chirp outside my window, that I half expect a Stegosaurus to walk through my front door, what simile does Steve Alten use to describe a Megalodon charging into a T-rex? It was, and I quote, "like a freight train striking a disabled SUV." Way to preserve the mood, Steve. show less

A very difficult book to rate. On the one hand it's poorly drawn characters and corny dialogue are among the worst I've ever read---the Russian bad guy and his evil oversexed mistress couldn't have been any more cartoonish had their names been Boris Badenov and Natasha. And with lines like: "You spend more time with that shark than you do with me....I want to be the ONLY female in your life!" Well, you get the idea. But the action sequences, as scientifically suspect as they are, still fly show more by in a flurry of daring (read: impossible) escapes, near misses, and creepy deep sea encounters sure to chill anyone with a healthy fear of deep water and enclosed spaces. As a piece of literature it barely rates a single star, but as a quick and entertaining summer beach read you could do a lot worse. show less

It's fascinating how supposedly tough adult characters can sound like emo teenagers one second and like biology textbooks the next. It's almost as if Steve Alten cribbed every section about marine biology straight from some other source and added dialogue tags. Of course, we know he didn't because he occasionally throws in some ideas that are completely off the wall or just plain wrong.

Still, I like how everyone is obsessed by giant ancient sharks even before we have the slightest hint that show more there might be giant ancient sharks around. It just keeps coming up in casual conversation. That's foresight, innit.

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Oh noes! If they don't stop the giant shark, it could disrupt the whales' migratory pattern! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Anything but that!

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They're hunting the shark now! It's so exciting! Despite the prose!

"The bifocal night glasses penetrated the dark, improving light amplification by using a coating of gallium arsenide on the photocathode revealing the quickly moving behemoths as they rose up and down along the surface of the Pacific."

Or in other words, "the night glasses made it easy to see the whales."

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Mental note: If you ever find yourself trying to capture a giant shark, only get in the water with it if the narrator has established you as a thoroughly Nice Guy. Sharks eat bad people. Also, if one of your relatives or friends suddenly shows up without ever having been mentioned before, tell them to stay on land. (Not that they'll be safe on land either, I guess.)

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The prose is awful, the "scientific" bits read as if someone just ripped a few pages out of Marine Biology For Dummies and inserted into the text, the characters are so one-dimensional it's no wonder the shark never manages to eat her fill of them, and the plot... what plot? But it's a SHARK THAT EATS SUBMARINES AND FLIES THROUGH THE AIR TO SNATCH PEOPLE OFF BOATS. I laugh, and I laugh, and I laugh, and I love the book to little bitty pieces. show less

Sometimes, I enjoy watching bad movies, particularly monster movies. That's why I watched the movie The Meg, but it turned out to actually a pretty good movie and not the hilarious cheese-fest I anticipated. I decided to read the book because I like to do that if I enjoy a movie. The book is 100% the hilarious cheese-fest I anticipated the movie being. It's a bit like watching an 80s action film but while also learning about shark mucus.

This book has it all - one-dimensional characters, show more awkward exposition, monster genre cliches ("now she's tasted human blood!"), overly dramatic language, all interspersed with clumsily-placed shark biology lessons. But I did give it three stars because as awful as it was, I was entertained. It was hilarious. I don't think it was meant to be, but it was. Sure, there were times when I rolled my eyes so hard I worried I would injure myself. But there were other times that I laughed so loud my husband had to ask if I was okay.

I read this in a day and will not be continuing with the series but I don't necessarily regret reading this. I think those that enjoy MST3K and mocking bad movies or books would also enjoy this offering, but I can't imagine anyone enjoying it that wanted to take it seriously. show less