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A review by buildhergender
Domain by Steve Alten
3.0
I started reading this after reading the MEG series and I have vague memories of reading and hating it when I was younger so I expected to dislike it.
Honestly I ended up reading this one well into the night because I enjoyed it.
Spoiler Alert
Characters:
Michael (Mick) Gabriel: This is one messed up dude. He grew up with a mother and father who spent his childhood going from archaeological to archaeological site looking for clues that the ancient men were helped to advance by aliens! He has spent the last decade or so in a mental hospital. Oh and he is the prophesied chosen one to save the world from the 2012 doomsday.
Julius Gabriel: Mick's father. He is alive for the first chapter of the book then he is dead. But don't worry you will get to learn all about him. In between chapters are sections from his journal. They read like a conspiracies theorists wet dream. And he has a habit of randomly underlining words in his journal, and I mean randomly. I could find no reason or rhyme why some words were underlined and some weren't.
Dominique Vazquez: A newly graduated Psyche student given Mick's case as her first and only case. Like all of Steve Alten's love interests she is at least 10 years younger than Mick. I feel like she should be lined with metal then wrapped with copper. Her opinions swing back and forth over whether Mick is truly crazy so fast and so many times she would be able to power my computer.
Pierre Robert Borgia: The antagonist of the book. He has one eye and is Secretary of State. He is pissed off when a black man is tapped to become the Vice president to the sitting president. I mean who would ever believe that a black person could be vice president in 2012 and be able to be elected in 2016.
The book starts off with letting us know what killed the dinosaurs. I'm sure you are sitting snug with your theories that it was an asteroid or possibly a mega eruption, but nope. It was aliens. Yes the book starts off with dinosaurs being wiped off, particularly a group of velociraptors take that Chricton, by an alien ship crash landing into the earth. It by the way was shot down by another alien ship.
The book then skips a few years, well a couple of million but who's counting, to a scene where the Gabriels are uncovering a precious ancient artifact using all the care of a modern archaeologist. Just joking despite the book stating over and over again that Julius Gabriel is a revered and well regarded archaeologists his methods of excavation is to go to the Nazca Lines with a metal detector. Once it is set off he digs through the thousand year old art to find what ever is buried there, it's a space coffee can. He then pulls it open to reveal an ancient map of the world which he quickly photographs which is good since he doesn't take any care to preserve the thing and it turns to dust.
We skip again and it's 10 years later. Mick is in an insane asylum. Why? Well it turns out that the Secretary of State was at one time an archaeologist. He had a thing for Mick's mother and was actually engaged to her. But he got tired of searching for aliens and decided to go work in the real world, the fool. While away Julius confesses his love for her, they are happy get married have Mick spend years searching for proof that aliens exist. She dies of pancreatic cancer Julius get's invited to give a speech at some important archaeologists event, it turns out it's a trap. Borgia gets up on stage to introduce Julius but instead roasts him. Julius has a heart attack and dies. Mick being 14 gets angry and attacks Borgia causing him to lose an eye. As revenge instead of having the kid arrested he pulls strings and gets him committed as insane and then pays a doctor to never let him out.
Dominique is introduced. She is a confident strong independent woman who will go a long way in making us feel that maybe equal rights and representation is starting to happen. And by that I mean within the first pages of her introduction she is humiliated by her new boss, has to talk about her sexual history and gets hit on by a co-worker. She then meets Mick and despite shocking him with a neck tazer the first time she meets him, she soon falls in love.
In the mean time something is happening in South America. There is an earth quake people die and a large amount of black goo rises. It turns out to be alien poo. It is deadly and kills anyone it touches, it also causes anyone who touches them people it touched to die.
Mick tells Dominique that the history we know is false. All the giant amazing monuments built by all of our previous ancestors were not built by them. Instead all of them were inspired by White Men with Blue eyes and White hair how managed to train all the savages....(Yes we have a Latino character being written by a white man telling us that all the great achievements made by people of color in the past was really done by white men.)
These white men were aliens who then got funky with some of the women of the time introducing their DNA into them and starting a race of super people. The aliens then left and civilizations reverted to savagery.
All of this was done to warn everyone that in 2012 all the stars in the milky way would line up and open the ability for a stargate of some kind to open and destroy the world.
Eventually Mick convinces Dominique that he's telling her the truth. She helps him to escape and they go down to Peru. Diving into an ancient well they find a secret passage way into a Mayan pyramid and inside find a space craft named Baalam.
While in the real world, off the coast of Peru where the earth quake happened mechanical birds start to come out of the water. Flying at night they keep landing in places where there are huge limestone deposits. When the sun rises they, being solar powered, create Nuclear Fusion explosions. No one sees these birds and so America blames the Russians, the Russians blame the Americans and the Australians who now have a giant hole in their continent blame everyone. Bad words are said, Borga doesn't help the situation and all the top officials head off to Mount Weather, to hide in the nuclear bunkers. Unfortunately the Russians know about it and pay a man to sneak in a suitcase nuke and most of the government, not the president or vice president but including the president's family, are turned into nuclear waste.
This makes the President angry and he says mean things, the Russian leader says bad things and would you know it pretty soon missiles are flying.
Thankfully cooler heads figure out what is going on and convince the President to call off the attack. He sends a command and his missiles blow up. He then tries to convince the Russian Leader to do the same. Giving a heart felt speech and saying that the best way he can show his sincerity is to kill himself. Which he does shooting himself in the head.
The Russian Premier isn't impressed so he says hold onto your asses and does not blow up his missiles. America sends off a second wave, because as every American knows if there is one thing we have a lot of it's nuclear bombs.
Just as all hell is about to happen Mick figures out that touching the spaceship activates it, because he is one of the decedents of the alien supermen. Inside the ship it somehow sends out a signal, that is routed through all the ancient monuments like the Giza Pyramids and Stone Hedge, turns out they were build as a way to cover up giant alien radio transmitters, that turns off all of the nuclear missiles and disarms all the mechanical birds. It is then revealed that they were all on limestone deposits and that them going off would have made CO2 levels rise to extinction level.
The lovebirds to the horizontal tango and she thinks that they are going to spend a happy life together but then Mick says the prophesy is not over. Out of the water come a giant flying dragon. It can not be destroyed by the Army, Navy or Air Force, but Mick has an ancient sword. Because the super aliens said he could Mick believes he can fight the giant dragon with the sword and would you believe he can. Pretty soon the dragons dead but it's mouth opens. This is the stargate. Mick rushes into the gate to fight what is coming, which turns out to be two women/demons I don't know it was 3 am. He kills them but instead of getting to go back to earth he instead meets an ancient alien who tells him that the book needs a sequel and that the his job isn't done. He puts Mick in a stone bathtub and sends him off to a far off planet where the Super Technologically advanced smart and infallible aliens are being oppressed and only Mick and his sword can save them.
Borgia is sent to Jail. Dominique ends the book pregnant with twins and knowing that Mick is alive and will return some day.
Some good things to say about the book is that for being so far from the date of 2012 Steve does make some startling good predictions. Cars that do not use keys to start. Self driving cars, well he was off a few years but got close and some other technological items. He also set up a black man to be president in 2016.
Three out of Five
Honestly I ended up reading this one well into the night because I enjoyed it.
Spoiler Alert
Characters:
Michael (Mick) Gabriel: This is one messed up dude. He grew up with a mother and father who spent his childhood going from archaeological to archaeological site looking for clues that the ancient men were helped to advance by aliens! He has spent the last decade or so in a mental hospital. Oh and he is the prophesied chosen one to save the world from the 2012 doomsday.
Julius Gabriel: Mick's father. He is alive for the first chapter of the book then he is dead. But don't worry you will get to learn all about him. In between chapters are sections from his journal. They read like a conspiracies theorists wet dream. And he has a habit of randomly underlining words in his journal, and I mean randomly. I could find no reason or rhyme why some words were underlined and some weren't.
Dominique Vazquez: A newly graduated Psyche student given Mick's case as her first and only case. Like all of Steve Alten's love interests she is at least 10 years younger than Mick. I feel like she should be lined with metal then wrapped with copper. Her opinions swing back and forth over whether Mick is truly crazy so fast and so many times she would be able to power my computer.
Pierre Robert Borgia: The antagonist of the book. He has one eye and is Secretary of State. He is pissed off when a black man is tapped to become the Vice president to the sitting president. I mean who would ever believe that a black person could be vice president in 2012 and be able to be elected in 2016.
The book starts off with letting us know what killed the dinosaurs. I'm sure you are sitting snug with your theories that it was an asteroid or possibly a mega eruption, but nope. It was aliens. Yes the book starts off with dinosaurs being wiped off, particularly a group of velociraptors take that Chricton, by an alien ship crash landing into the earth. It by the way was shot down by another alien ship.
The book then skips a few years, well a couple of million but who's counting, to a scene where the Gabriels are uncovering a precious ancient artifact using all the care of a modern archaeologist. Just joking despite the book stating over and over again that Julius Gabriel is a revered and well regarded archaeologists his methods of excavation is to go to the Nazca Lines with a metal detector. Once it is set off he digs through the thousand year old art to find what ever is buried there, it's a space coffee can. He then pulls it open to reveal an ancient map of the world which he quickly photographs which is good since he doesn't take any care to preserve the thing and it turns to dust.
We skip again and it's 10 years later. Mick is in an insane asylum. Why? Well it turns out that the Secretary of State was at one time an archaeologist. He had a thing for Mick's mother and was actually engaged to her. But he got tired of searching for aliens and decided to go work in the real world, the fool. While away Julius confesses his love for her, they are happy get married have Mick spend years searching for proof that aliens exist. She dies of pancreatic cancer Julius get's invited to give a speech at some important archaeologists event, it turns out it's a trap. Borgia gets up on stage to introduce Julius but instead roasts him. Julius has a heart attack and dies. Mick being 14 gets angry and attacks Borgia causing him to lose an eye. As revenge instead of having the kid arrested he pulls strings and gets him committed as insane and then pays a doctor to never let him out.
Dominique is introduced. She is a confident strong independent woman who will go a long way in making us feel that maybe equal rights and representation is starting to happen. And by that I mean within the first pages of her introduction she is humiliated by her new boss, has to talk about her sexual history and gets hit on by a co-worker. She then meets Mick and despite shocking him with a neck tazer the first time she meets him, she soon falls in love.
In the mean time something is happening in South America. There is an earth quake people die and a large amount of black goo rises. It turns out to be alien poo. It is deadly and kills anyone it touches, it also causes anyone who touches them people it touched to die.
Mick tells Dominique that the history we know is false. All the giant amazing monuments built by all of our previous ancestors were not built by them. Instead all of them were inspired by White Men with Blue eyes and White hair how managed to train all the savages....(Yes we have a Latino character being written by a white man telling us that all the great achievements made by people of color in the past was really done by white men.)
These white men were aliens who then got funky with some of the women of the time introducing their DNA into them and starting a race of super people. The aliens then left and civilizations reverted to savagery.
All of this was done to warn everyone that in 2012 all the stars in the milky way would line up and open the ability for a stargate of some kind to open and destroy the world.
Eventually Mick convinces Dominique that he's telling her the truth. She helps him to escape and they go down to Peru. Diving into an ancient well they find a secret passage way into a Mayan pyramid and inside find a space craft named Baalam.
While in the real world, off the coast of Peru where the earth quake happened mechanical birds start to come out of the water. Flying at night they keep landing in places where there are huge limestone deposits. When the sun rises they, being solar powered, create Nuclear Fusion explosions. No one sees these birds and so America blames the Russians, the Russians blame the Americans and the Australians who now have a giant hole in their continent blame everyone. Bad words are said, Borga doesn't help the situation and all the top officials head off to Mount Weather, to hide in the nuclear bunkers. Unfortunately the Russians know about it and pay a man to sneak in a suitcase nuke and most of the government, not the president or vice president but including the president's family, are turned into nuclear waste.
This makes the President angry and he says mean things, the Russian leader says bad things and would you know it pretty soon missiles are flying.
Thankfully cooler heads figure out what is going on and convince the President to call off the attack. He sends a command and his missiles blow up. He then tries to convince the Russian Leader to do the same. Giving a heart felt speech and saying that the best way he can show his sincerity is to kill himself. Which he does shooting himself in the head.
The Russian Premier isn't impressed so he says hold onto your asses and does not blow up his missiles. America sends off a second wave, because as every American knows if there is one thing we have a lot of it's nuclear bombs.
Just as all hell is about to happen Mick figures out that touching the spaceship activates it, because he is one of the decedents of the alien supermen. Inside the ship it somehow sends out a signal, that is routed through all the ancient monuments like the Giza Pyramids and Stone Hedge, turns out they were build as a way to cover up giant alien radio transmitters, that turns off all of the nuclear missiles and disarms all the mechanical birds. It is then revealed that they were all on limestone deposits and that them going off would have made CO2 levels rise to extinction level.
The lovebirds to the horizontal tango and she thinks that they are going to spend a happy life together but then Mick says the prophesy is not over. Out of the water come a giant flying dragon. It can not be destroyed by the Army, Navy or Air Force, but Mick has an ancient sword. Because the super aliens said he could Mick believes he can fight the giant dragon with the sword and would you believe he can. Pretty soon the dragons dead but it's mouth opens. This is the stargate. Mick rushes into the gate to fight what is coming, which turns out to be two women/demons I don't know it was 3 am. He kills them but instead of getting to go back to earth he instead meets an ancient alien who tells him that the book needs a sequel and that the his job isn't done. He puts Mick in a stone bathtub and sends him off to a far off planet where the Super Technologically advanced smart and infallible aliens are being oppressed and only Mick and his sword can save them.
Borgia is sent to Jail. Dominique ends the book pregnant with twins and knowing that Mick is alive and will return some day.
Some good things to say about the book is that for being so far from the date of 2012 Steve does make some startling good predictions. Cars that do not use keys to start. Self driving cars, well he was off a few years but got close and some other technological items. He also set up a black man to be president in 2016.
Three out of Five