Hearing the Sound of Distant Thunder? It's Just Me, Chucking Thunderhead in a Dumpster
Amazon says:
Banes & Noble thinks:
Author: Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child Title: Thunderhead Genre: mystery
I like walking into my neighborhood Barnes and Noble or Borders -- heck, here in Austin I'm happy to hit Book People (though it sure ain't no Tattered Cover) -- to snarf up a "bargain book" or two. You know the ones I mean -- the so-called remainders, hardcover copies left over after the paperback was published? After all these years as a heavy reader and then the last two decades or so spent staring at computer screens, my once 20:20 is looking like a thing of the past, That means that hardcovers are not only more substantial, I can also pander to my vanity and skip the spectacles for another year or two! Besides, the remaindered hardback is often more economical than the paperback. Go figure...
It was in this manner that I obtained my copy of Thunderhead, 1999's archaeological thriller from Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child. The original publisher's price of $25.95 (US) had been slashed to $5.98. Lemme see, move the decimal, carry the one... that means that I got the book at about 23% of original cost. But was it worth it?
Good question. Let's see what I got for my $5.98:
A Recipe for "City of Gold Stew"
Ingredients:
1 untenured professor from a hugely endowed archaeology institute. 1 hand-written letter 1 legendary Quivira, City of Gold 2 smelly, fur-clad aboriginals
Liberally sprinkle letter with dashes of legendary Quivira, City of Gold, reserve remainder for later. Allow to cool for sixteen years. Add to untenured professor and mix well. Place aboriginals on professor and beat lightly. Remove aboriginals and reserve for for later use.
2 prima donna archaeologists 1 harley-loving nerdboy Californian 1 Nu-Yawk City journalist 1 bandy-legged cowboy 1 cordon bleu chef 14 horses 1 golden girl
Mix next six ingredients (primas donnas through horses) well, and place untenured professor on top. Place, uncovered, in low-temperature (100° F) oven. After one night, add golden girl using airplane-shaped spoon. Bake for four-five days, moving slowly about oven. After three days, remove three horses and squash like bugs.
Remove mixture from oven and place with entire legendary Quivara, City of Gold in Anasazi pressure cooker. Rub untenured professor against golden girl to increase friction. Remove wrapping from golden girl and rub against a prima donna to increase heat. Skewer both nerdboy and journalist with Cupid's arrows that point at professor. Remove two more horses, use reserved aboriginals to chop. Extract professor and journalist, mix lightly with mystic, and return to mixture. Add thunderstorm and place entire mixture in large archaeologist processor. Puree.
Is it Edible, Though?
Preston and Child have obviously done their research: the mystery of the Anasazi people's disappearance is one of the most frustrating (for archaeologists) and fascinating (for laymen) of the New World. Here's an entire civilization that more or less disappeared off the face of the Earth overnight, leaving clues for neither the "Why?" nor the "Where?" The authors have developed a fascinating scenario: that a long-lost Anasazi city is the legendary City of Gold (variously called Cibola and Quivira) sought by southwestern explorers from the sixteenth century onward.
When Nora Kelly, a young archaeologist, receives a letter from her long-missing father that might contain directions to the fabled city, she embarks on an expedition to follow in his footsteps. The fabulously wealthy chairman of the Santa Fe Archaeological Institute places her -- an untenured assistant professor with a still damp diploma -- in charge of the expedition, and sends along two world-class scientists plus his only daughter (also an archaeologist). The other members of the team are a JPL technician Nora coerced into helping her find the trail using remote sensing, a journalist sent along to "chronicle" the expedition, a crusty cowboy to care for the horses, and a world-class chef as expedition cook. Unfortunately, the legendary city also has a pair of self-appointed security guards: Native American witches (a la Tony Hillerman) who ingest massive quantities of psychedelic cacti, mushrooms and roots to give themselves the power of street punks on PCP. And, of course, the members of the expedition are immediately -- and constantly -- either at each others' throats or lusting after one anothers' bodies (or both).
Let's put it this way: the recipe has potential, but there's still some ingredient or another missing. The plotting is almost comically predictable (with a few exceptions). Another weakness is that Preston and Child are inept at moving characters in and out of scenes. One will disappear for chapters at a time -- without even a third party mention -- and then suddenly reappear on the page. Odd, since the seven members of the expedition are constantly within earshot if not within sight of one another. There are also brief returns to a completely superfluous subplot, which features Nora's brother back in Santa Fe.
Character, Character, My Kingdom for a Character!
Perhaps the book's greatest weakness is its characterizations: there isn't a character in the book who is not either flat as a pancake or pure stereotype:
* Nora is a beautiful academic who doesn't know it (think Sandra Bullock in "Love Potion Number Nine"), an absent-minded professor, daddy's girl. She has, by the way, a brother Skip - an Irishman who's an incipient alcoholic. No stereotypes here, eh? * The Golden Girl, Sloane Goddard (Sloane? automatic GG status from having two last names!) is a beautiful academic who does know it. At just 26, she's already an accomplished horsewoman, pilot, rock climber, and seductress, as well as having just completed her first year as professor of archaeology at Princeton. I'm not certain how she found time to work on those hobbies and still get those degrees at that young age, are you? * The primas donnas are a pair of world-class archaeologists who don't like to get dirty. Imagine that. And, naturally, one is a leading proponent of "Zero Site Trauma" (take pictures only) and the other's a digger -- ooooh, instant conflict! * The journalist is a loudmouth boor with a chip on his shoulder and the inevitable heart of gold (Think Timothy Busfield's Danny in "West Wing"). He, of course, worships the beauteous Nora. * The nerdboy (who quickly disappears into the background) is your everyday pasty-faced pop-tart-chomping hacker-type. He, of course, worships the beauteous Nora. * The cook always wears freshly-pressed khakis and never sweats (I did have a geology prof like that once). He does have one startling aspect, though -- he carries a massive hogleg to protect his culinary treasures. Oh, and he's apparently an ethnobotanist as well -- equally at home on the slopes of Denali or in the Sahara. Pish! * The crusty, bowlegged wrangler is also a cowboy poet (think Garrison Kiellor's Lefty [or is it Dusty?] in "The Lives of the Cowboys").
The main point, however, is that none of the characters is new, none appears to have been invented fresh for this novel.
On Language
The freshly-paved road left Santa Fe and arrowed west through Pinon trees. An amber-colored sun was sinking into a scrim of dirty clouds behind the snow-capped Jemez Mountains, drawing a counterpane of shade across the landscape. Nora Kelly guided the rattletrap Ford pickup along the road, down chamisa-covered hills and across the beds of dry washes.
Thus begins Thunderhead, clearly setting the linguistic tone of the novel. From this point on, each noun is slathered with adjectives like butter on morning toast; the mongrel-dog prose of Preston and Child drools adverbs on every verb. Their writing is so cluttered, so full of gingerbread-like modifiers that one might well compare it to a the architecture of a Victorian house. After two days of slogging through the merciless jungles of this prose, I was gasping for air, dreaming of the austere structure of a Hemingway novel! Oh, and they use the word "counterpane" at least twice more; quite often for something not written by Martha Stewart!
Here, have another taste (chosen more or less at random):
There, on the opposite cliff face, a huge alcove arched across the length of the canyon, poised halfway between ground and sky. The morning sun shone in at a perfect angle, shooting a wedge of pale light into the recesses below the huge arch.
You'd think that with access to a good dictionary and thesaurus (how else do you get "scrim" and "counterpane," not to mention "tenebrous" and "accretion"?) that the two could come up with a synonym for "huge"...
Recommended? Not!
Pass on this one, unless you're dedicated fans of the writing team (they, after all, are the pair that brought us Relic and Reliquary). If, on the other hand, you prefer your fiction tightly plotted, go elsewhere. If you like characters that are built up from the skeletons of motivation instead of cookie-cutter stereotypes, go elsewhere. As fas as I'm concerned, the only redeeming factor for this novel is the interesting science -- and I'm not well-versed enough in archaeology to know whether it's every bit as bad as the plot and the characters.