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dantastic's review against another edition
3.0
What do a missing Confederate regiment, a lost Mayan city, and the fountain of youth have in common? They're all parts of the plot of Hunt at the Well of Eternity!
Gabriel Hunt is a globetrotting adventurer in the mold of Doc Savage and Indiana Jones. His brother Michael is head of the Hunt Foundation, an organization that has connections to museums all over the world.
The story starts with Gabriel and Michael at a banquet and the action starts right away when a woman tries to give a package to Michael, only to have the waiters turn out to be gun-toting thugs. Once the bad guys snatch the girl, the Hunts discover that the package is an old Confederate flag wrapped around a whiskey bottle full of water. From there, it's a trip to Florida, Mexico, and finally the jungles of Guatemala, all with non-stop action! You can easily imagine the goings-on accompanied by a John Williams soundtrack.
The writing is nothing to write home about. It's not bad but not fantastic. The story is good, jam-packed with action. There are some nods to Indiana Jones. Hunt goes from one predicament to the next fairly quickly. It's a good read for a dismal Sunday afternoon.
I'd recommend his to any Indiana Jones or Doc Savage fan, or any fan of pulp adventure stories in general. If you were disappointed with the last Indiana Jones movie, this should get that bad taste out of your mouth.
Gabriel Hunt is a globetrotting adventurer in the mold of Doc Savage and Indiana Jones. His brother Michael is head of the Hunt Foundation, an organization that has connections to museums all over the world.
The story starts with Gabriel and Michael at a banquet and the action starts right away when a woman tries to give a package to Michael, only to have the waiters turn out to be gun-toting thugs. Once the bad guys snatch the girl, the Hunts discover that the package is an old Confederate flag wrapped around a whiskey bottle full of water. From there, it's a trip to Florida, Mexico, and finally the jungles of Guatemala, all with non-stop action! You can easily imagine the goings-on accompanied by a John Williams soundtrack.
The writing is nothing to write home about. It's not bad but not fantastic. The story is good, jam-packed with action. There are some nods to Indiana Jones. Hunt goes from one predicament to the next fairly quickly. It's a good read for a dismal Sunday afternoon.
I'd recommend his to any Indiana Jones or Doc Savage fan, or any fan of pulp adventure stories in general. If you were disappointed with the last Indiana Jones movie, this should get that bad taste out of your mouth.
mferrante83's review against another edition
3.0
Leisure Books is of course an imprint of Dorchester Publishing the same publishing house responsible for the Hard Case Crime imprint. Of course none of this should be a surprise at since the series is the brainchild of Charles Ardai; the man behind Hard Case crime. I was first attracted to this series thanks to the clever use of the character’s name as the author. While this somewhat meta-fictional conceit doesn’t extend to the rest of the novel and is traded for a straight-forward no-nonsense third-person narrative. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing since Gabriel Hunt at the Well of Eternity was a brisk novel full of action, suspense, and excitement.
The series, The Adventures of Gabriel Hunt, is describes on its website as follows:
From the towers of Manhattan to the jungles of South America, from the sands of the Sahara to the frozen crags of Antarctica, one man finds adventure everywhere he goes: GABRIEL HUNT.
Backed by the resources of the $100 million Hunt Foundation and armed with his trusty Colt revolver, Gabriel Hunt has always been ready for anything—but is he prepared for the adventures that lie in wait for him?
And…are you
Hunt is a cross between Indiana Jones and James Bond. Like the Indiana Jones series Hunt blends historical swashbuckling with the occasional dose of supernatural/unexplainable. Indeed as Gabriel relates at one point in the novel, and I paraphrase, “an old friend of my father, an unmarried professor, taught me how to use [a bullwhip:].” While the series takes place in present day Gabriel’s signature weapon of choice is an antique Colt Peacemaker. It’s an interesting symbolic choice; the Colt is a uniquely identifiable symbol of America’s past that is in many ways the American West’s equivalent of a knight’s sword.
Gabriel Hunt at the Well of Eternity wastes little, or rather no time, on lengthy introductions to our hero focusing instead on throwing the reader right into the action. The collar loosening of the opening line segues neatly into the introduction of a beautiful woman jumps from there into a lengthy gunfight with a side of fisticuffs quickly makes its way to car chase followed by a boat chase followed by a…you get the idea. A bare minimum of exposition keeps the reader up to speed on the historical mystery portion of the novel. Not that it’s too complicated. The title of the novel and the end of the opening scene give a pretty good idea of what our endgame is going to be about.
Of course a book like this is more about the ride getting there more than anything else. The byword of this novel is excitement. The quiet moments are few and Reasoner does his damnedest to keep readers on the edge of their seats and to keep the pages turning. While the novel didn’t grip in the kind of fervor that would keep me up reading until 2 AM it did have me constantly wondering what kind of shenanigans Hunt would have come up with to get out of each new bit of trouble. Of course I never once questioned that Gabriel would find his way out each certain death situation.
Gabriel Hunt at the Well of Eternity takes readers from the Manhattan museum, to the swamps of Florida, to the jungles of Mexico all in just over 230 pages. It is a book that doesn’t ask big questions about life and existence, nor does it provide you with any startling insight into the nature of humanity. What it does do is provide you with a thrilling non-stop edge-of-your-seat romp through exotic locales full of adventure and peril. If an afternoon of excitement and diversion from your rather ordinary life is what your looking for then Gabriel Hunt is the man you’re looking for.
The series, The Adventures of Gabriel Hunt, is describes on its website as follows:
From the towers of Manhattan to the jungles of South America, from the sands of the Sahara to the frozen crags of Antarctica, one man finds adventure everywhere he goes: GABRIEL HUNT.
Backed by the resources of the $100 million Hunt Foundation and armed with his trusty Colt revolver, Gabriel Hunt has always been ready for anything—but is he prepared for the adventures that lie in wait for him?
And…are you
Hunt is a cross between Indiana Jones and James Bond. Like the Indiana Jones series Hunt blends historical swashbuckling with the occasional dose of supernatural/unexplainable. Indeed as Gabriel relates at one point in the novel, and I paraphrase, “an old friend of my father, an unmarried professor, taught me how to use [a bullwhip:].” While the series takes place in present day Gabriel’s signature weapon of choice is an antique Colt Peacemaker. It’s an interesting symbolic choice; the Colt is a uniquely identifiable symbol of America’s past that is in many ways the American West’s equivalent of a knight’s sword.
Gabriel Hunt at the Well of Eternity wastes little, or rather no time, on lengthy introductions to our hero focusing instead on throwing the reader right into the action. The collar loosening of the opening line segues neatly into the introduction of a beautiful woman jumps from there into a lengthy gunfight with a side of fisticuffs quickly makes its way to car chase followed by a boat chase followed by a…you get the idea. A bare minimum of exposition keeps the reader up to speed on the historical mystery portion of the novel. Not that it’s too complicated. The title of the novel and the end of the opening scene give a pretty good idea of what our endgame is going to be about.
Of course a book like this is more about the ride getting there more than anything else. The byword of this novel is excitement. The quiet moments are few and Reasoner does his damnedest to keep readers on the edge of their seats and to keep the pages turning. While the novel didn’t grip in the kind of fervor that would keep me up reading until 2 AM it did have me constantly wondering what kind of shenanigans Hunt would have come up with to get out of each new bit of trouble. Of course I never once questioned that Gabriel would find his way out each certain death situation.
Gabriel Hunt at the Well of Eternity takes readers from the Manhattan museum, to the swamps of Florida, to the jungles of Mexico all in just over 230 pages. It is a book that doesn’t ask big questions about life and existence, nor does it provide you with any startling insight into the nature of humanity. What it does do is provide you with a thrilling non-stop edge-of-your-seat romp through exotic locales full of adventure and peril. If an afternoon of excitement and diversion from your rather ordinary life is what your looking for then Gabriel Hunt is the man you’re looking for.
imabrunette23's review against another edition
2.0
I feel bad giving this only two stars cause I thought it was an OK story. I figured out what Gabriel was looking for in the first twenty pages. The characters were kind of flat though. Quick read.
djotaku's review against another edition
4.0
I'm pretty dang sure I got this book during one of B&N's free ebook fridays. I don't know if they still do that, but it's something they used to do when I first got my Nook. There's no way I would have bought this book on my own. That said, this book is just as pulpy as you'd expect from the cover - a painted look from back when they would use illustration rather than photos for book covers and a mostly naked woman watching a muscular man dispatch someone else. This cover's pretty accurate to a scene in the book except that the woman isn't wearing a bikini - she's fully clothed, but her recently ripped shirt has exposed her bra.
Reminding me of the action of an Indiana Jones movie mixed with Johnny Quest, it was a blast to read this action-archeology fiction. It's like The Da Vinci Code, but without its head up its arse trying to seem all conspiratorial. To keep the comparisons going, the main characters - the Hunt Brothers - reminded me of Batman and Oracle. Not in the sense that an animated version of their most famous story ends up with an awkward sex scene, but in that they're rich and well-connected in society, but one also can do battle with bad guys and survive despite the odds while the other stays at home and does all the research and smart guy stuff.
As for the plot, again it's nice and pulp and McGuffin-y. A woman tries to give the Hunt brothers a historical artifact and is kidnapped. One of them tries to save her and that chase leads all over the world. There's sex (but no sex scenes), action, adventure, ruffians, rich people who are pure evil, and bad guy Russians. Oh, and despite the cover and pulpy nature - it was written in 2009 and takes place in modern times.
If you want some pure dessert as a break from more serious fare, this is a good book to read.
Reminding me of the action of an Indiana Jones movie mixed with Johnny Quest, it was a blast to read this action-archeology fiction. It's like The Da Vinci Code, but without its head up its arse trying to seem all conspiratorial. To keep the comparisons going, the main characters - the Hunt Brothers - reminded me of Batman and Oracle. Not in the sense that an animated version of their most famous story ends up with an awkward sex scene, but in that they're rich and well-connected in society, but one also can do battle with bad guys and survive despite the odds while the other stays at home and does all the research and smart guy stuff.
As for the plot, again it's nice and pulp and McGuffin-y. A woman tries to give the Hunt brothers a historical artifact and is kidnapped. One of them tries to save her and that chase leads all over the world. There's sex (but no sex scenes), action, adventure, ruffians, rich people who are pure evil, and bad guy Russians. Oh, and despite the cover and pulpy nature - it was written in 2009 and takes place in modern times.
If you want some pure dessert as a break from more serious fare, this is a good book to read.
thomasroche's review against another edition
4.0
Minor Potential Spoiler Alert.
Gabriel Hunt, in case you somehow missed it, is a takeoff on Doc Savage, though news stories and comments about this new Hard Case Crime series have been referencing Indiana Jones more often, and fans of Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt or other pulpy globetrotting pseudo-archaeologist heroes with six-shooters will also recognize the style, and it likely won't fail to please you.
Hunt at the Well of Eternity is a good, entertaining, fast-paced novel introducing readers to the universe and the hero. The interesting thing about the property is that it's set in the modern-day -- thought it feels like the '40s throughout, it's 100% contemporary. Also interesting is that it's a supernatural series, or at least this is a supernatural novel -- in much the same way that Indiana Jones is.
The writing is a bit clunky to start with but once the plot gets going -- which is pretty damn fast -- it clips along at breakneck speed and comes to a satisfying conclusions. None of the twists and turns caught me off-guard, but that's hardly the point here. The hero is likable enough, the overall idea is solid, and with the authors lined up to contribute to the series, it's almost guaranteed to get even better as it goes along. Recommended!
Gabriel Hunt, in case you somehow missed it, is a takeoff on Doc Savage, though news stories and comments about this new Hard Case Crime series have been referencing Indiana Jones more often, and fans of Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt or other pulpy globetrotting pseudo-archaeologist heroes with six-shooters will also recognize the style, and it likely won't fail to please you.
Hunt at the Well of Eternity is a good, entertaining, fast-paced novel introducing readers to the universe and the hero. The interesting thing about the property is that it's set in the modern-day -- thought it feels like the '40s throughout, it's 100% contemporary. Also interesting is that it's a supernatural series, or at least this is a supernatural novel -- in much the same way that Indiana Jones is.
The writing is a bit clunky to start with but once the plot gets going -- which is pretty damn fast -- it clips along at breakneck speed and comes to a satisfying conclusions. None of the twists and turns caught me off-guard, but that's hardly the point here. The hero is likable enough, the overall idea is solid, and with the authors lined up to contribute to the series, it's almost guaranteed to get even better as it goes along. Recommended!
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