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A review by trevert
Goliath by Steve Alten
2.0
Welll... Not great.
Normally I really enjoy Alten's stuff and appreciate the B-movie cheeseball lunacy of his giant shark books, but this one was a struggle. He seemed to be going more for a Tom Clancy feel here, with long detailed technical descriptions of the various subs and military hardware that fill the story, but his forté is definitely in giant sea monster attacks, not complex political tech thrillers. In a nutshell, this just turned into an extended drag, IMO at least.
The US Navy has created the "next step" in global sea power, which is somehow a gigantic robotic manta ray with glowing eyes and an AI brain that's a nanosecond from going SkyNet. This seems as likely as the Pentagon financing the creation of MechaGodzilla for homeland defense, but just go with it. The thing has been hijacked by terrorists, which brings in Standard Steve Alten Hero, a disgraced hyper-capable expert whose life hangs under the shadow of some past mistake, plus Standard Steve Alten Heroine, a bitchy, borderline lunatic ex whose emotional overreactions and histrionics could power New Zealand. These two somehow get on board the hijacked sub and then things...well, grind to a plod.
Look, I loved the Meg books - Hell, I just finished Hell's Aquarium and it was a blast - so I hope I don't come off like the standard snotty elitist reviewer types who auto-hate anything anything that even vaguely smacks of "genre" or "fun". This was, however, a sea monster of a different color, and the focus on the politics and the political machinations and the gradual progress of the hero, it all just combined to suck all the momentum out of the book. I bet it could make a great movie, if the expositions and extended descriptions were removed, but as it is, you get a chapter of spy action and then a chapter on why nations have nuclear weapons and then a chapter describing how the submarine works and then a chapter back to the characters... but by that time, I'd lost interest in what they were doing.
It wasn't a DNF, I've read worse and bailed, but it wasn't one I'll ever pick up again either. Sadness. Getting pigeonholed as a writer must be hell and I'm sure Mr. Alten doesn't want to spend the entire rest of his career writing giant shark books, BUT... Well, I'm hoping his next venture out of familiar waters retains some of drive-in movie fun of his Meg books.
Normally I really enjoy Alten's stuff and appreciate the B-movie cheeseball lunacy of his giant shark books, but this one was a struggle. He seemed to be going more for a Tom Clancy feel here, with long detailed technical descriptions of the various subs and military hardware that fill the story, but his forté is definitely in giant sea monster attacks, not complex political tech thrillers. In a nutshell, this just turned into an extended drag, IMO at least.
The US Navy has created the "next step" in global sea power, which is somehow a gigantic robotic manta ray with glowing eyes and an AI brain that's a nanosecond from going SkyNet. This seems as likely as the Pentagon financing the creation of MechaGodzilla for homeland defense, but just go with it. The thing has been hijacked by terrorists, which brings in Standard Steve Alten Hero, a disgraced hyper-capable expert whose life hangs under the shadow of some past mistake, plus Standard Steve Alten Heroine, a bitchy, borderline lunatic ex whose emotional overreactions and histrionics could power New Zealand. These two somehow get on board the hijacked sub and then things...well, grind to a plod.
Look, I loved the Meg books - Hell, I just finished Hell's Aquarium and it was a blast - so I hope I don't come off like the standard snotty elitist reviewer types who auto-hate anything anything that even vaguely smacks of "genre" or "fun". This was, however, a sea monster of a different color, and the focus on the politics and the political machinations and the gradual progress of the hero, it all just combined to suck all the momentum out of the book. I bet it could make a great movie, if the expositions and extended descriptions were removed, but as it is, you get a chapter of spy action and then a chapter on why nations have nuclear weapons and then a chapter describing how the submarine works and then a chapter back to the characters... but by that time, I'd lost interest in what they were doing.
It wasn't a DNF, I've read worse and bailed, but it wasn't one I'll ever pick up again either. Sadness. Getting pigeonholed as a writer must be hell and I'm sure Mr. Alten doesn't want to spend the entire rest of his career writing giant shark books, BUT... Well, I'm hoping his next venture out of familiar waters retains some of drive-in movie fun of his Meg books.