Amazonia

Those of us who are video-game challenged have action author James Rollins, who provides slam-bang, over-the-top, Indiana-Jones style stories with more gobbling-up than a vintage Pacman.

In fact, Rollins has penned the novelization of the latest Indiana Jones movie, a paperback due in May, and in Amazonia he demonstrates why he is suited for that task.

Like the great action stories, Amazonia features a trip into the deepest, darkest regions of the rainforest, a sort of fountain-of-youth expedition on behalf of a pharmaceutical company. The mission begins when a member of a failed previous mission walks out of the jungle after being missing for years.

The thing is – he went into the jungle as an amputee, and stumbled out four years later having re-grown his lost arm.

There is a fortune waiting for whoever discovers the source of the medical miracle, and two pharmaceutical companies send in teams, with the second led – naturally – by a psychopath who will stop at nothing to steal whatever the first team finds.

Rollins crafts his quest with one chase after another, with the unfortunate first expedition falling victim to giant caimans (those alligator-like snappers), land-roving piranhas, panthers, a plague of locusts, and poison dart blowguns.

There is almost a videogame quality to the way the poor souls are dispatched, but Rollins keeps the action fast and furious, and it is nearly impossible to put the book down, even if some of the events have an eye-rolling outlandishness. (I couldn’t figure out why the psychopathic second-expedition leader had to blow up the source of the miracle-cure after obtaining only the tiniest quantity. The drug company might have bought it by the barrel!)

The book is a barrel of fun, regardless, and readers will likely begin a quest to read the rest of Rollins’ full-of-action adventures.