James Rollins

Amazonia

Sian Wadey

It was the blurb of Amazonia that got me hooked. 
'A government agent stumbles out of the world's most inhospitable jungle... he went in with one arm missing and emerged with both intact.'
I was in immediately, jungles, government agents, the regrowth of limbs, what more could a girl ask for?
Our journey into the wilderness is headed by Nathan Rand and a team of doctors, experts and of course, several CIA agents as they track Agent Clark's (formerly of one arms, now of two) route through the jungle in the hope of ascertaining how his limb grew back. On their way they encounter all sorts of mutated animals, deserted villages and signs of a mysterious tribe feared by all. And don't even get me started on the evil Dr. Favre and his girlfriend who has a penchant for making shriveled heads.
I don't want to give too much away of this book, but the best way to describe it (and I mean this as a compliment), is that it's a blue print for an action adventure movie. It's full of cliches and often quite predictable but it's fun, it's an adventure! 
The characters are all interesting, if a little stereotypical and none of them are safe as they fall to the mercy of the jungle. One of them even has a pet jaguar (brilliant!). 
I would love to see this in a cinema, sometime in the future. In the meantime, enjoy it for what it is, a romp in the Amazon, not a fine piece of literature.

Alost

a mind chilling mystery
adventure thriller frm today's #1thriller writer. A group has been
selected for a journy through
amazon forest, where strange

animal and plant life awaits you.You are not reading but
travelling along.

a novel

Full disclosure: I used to LOVE James Rollins' books in middle and early high school. They were fun, action packed, interesting, and just on the verge of fantasy...fantastical realism, I'd say. Of the 4 I read, this one was my least favorite, because it wasn't as fun and interesting as the others. This was well over 10 years ago, so I decided to give this one a reread as it fit a book challenge. As a kid, I probably would have given this 4 stars. As an adult, the book's issues are much more apparent to me.

First of all, I was a bit put off by Rollins' consistent referring to the indigenous people as "Indians," but of course I'm not totally sure what the accepted nomenclature is for the tribes of the Amazon. These people seemed to be respectfully portrayed at times aside from the dubious naming, but there were also some issues and elements that make me question the author. For example, he uses the Yanomamo tribe throughout the book as the main tribe the hero is familiar with. The author's background is not in Latin American indigenous people, and there are no acknowledgments at the end of the book, so I wonder where he got his information from re: this tribe. One thing I did discover in searching for them is that the map shown at the beginning of the book does not seem to match up with the map of where the Yanomamo live. The other tribe, the Ban-ali, is a ~super scary and mysterious, almost mythological tribe for most of the book. This is a made-up tribe, as far as I could tell, but the mythos surrounding the tribe was that of a ruthless and scary tribe, which is a bit side-eye worthy coming from a white author.

The worst offense was the portrayal of Tshui, the villain's "woman" (literally how she was referred, as if she were his property) from the Shuar tribe. She was always silent, naked, and sexually eager. The only other thing we knew about her was that she was deadly and would make shrunken heads out of the people she and the villain killed. The misogyny is disgusting, and the fact that she's the only indigenous woman in the book (aside from a scene at the very beginning) makes the issues with her portrayal even more glaring. There is also a female Asian researcher on the team (unspecified country of origin) who is portrayed as highly intelligent but meek, with a soft and sweet voice. Great, more stereotypes. (view spoiler)[Also, both of these WOC die, and in the case of the Asian woman, it was needless and did not impact the plot at all. (hide spoiler)]

It's not just WOC that Rollins mistreats, though the white woman is certainly treated better by comparison. In all of the Rollins novels I've read, there's gotta be a woman for the main hero. The woman in this one is a redhead from Boston named Kelly O'Brien. Can't get much more stereotypically Irish than that, can you? (This only stuck out to me because in another of his books, the main woman is actually from Ireland and her portrayal smacks you over the head with it, so I'm starting to wonder if there's a trend). The "Gary Stu" hero, Nathan, and Kelly meet for the first time by Kelly trying to treat an indigenous child with modern methods, for which Nathan yells at her for being stupid and careless. No joke. Yes, there's a point made here to respect different medical treatments from self-contained tribes like the Yanomamo even if they don't make sense to modern medicine, but it's made by the main woman getting lectured by the hero the second she appears, which doesn't sit right with me.

A large part of her character revolves around her having a daughter back home. Of course, the daughter is infected by the disease they're trying to cure, which puts Kelly in an emotionally compromised position. Throughout the book, she has a couple heroic moments, but is largely a non-entity aside from her occasionally exchanging glances with or getting comforted by Nathan. Of course, a few days into the expedition, they sleep together and it's the ~most wonderful thing ever.~ The next day, they're separated when the villain captures her and a few others, and the villain blows up the area where Nathan was. Kelly's thought, thinking Nathan is dead? "I will seek revenge for you Nathan, or die trying." Umm, hello? Shouldn't your first priority be getting back to your sick daughter, not seeking revenge for this dude you just met a few days ago? What terrible writing for that character.

Of course, (view spoiler)[Nathan lived, the villain got killed, they found the cure for the disease, and everyone lived happily ever after. Fast-forward 9 months, Nathan and Kelly are engaged and Kelly is miraculously pregnant from their night in the tree house, even though she had previously found out she couldn't have more kids. rme (hide spoiler)]

I actually reduced this from 3 to 2 stars as I was typing this review. It's a moderately interesting read regarding the medical mystery plot points with plenty of action, but the characterization really ruins any good things this book has going for it. The cultural sensitivity or lack thereof is a topic with which I'm not well-versed, but I have a bad feeling about the portrayals in this book, and I wonder how accurate the things portrayed are to the tribes he describes. I tried searching for indigenous views on the book, but couldn't find anything through Google. If anyone has recommendations for resources to read on this topic, please let me know!

I'm curious now to go back and read the books I loved by him to see if I encounter similar issues. Something tells me I will, since his books are very formulaic from what I remember about the others. Self-insert Gary Stu hero, flat (and often stereotypically "kickass" and independent, yet they fall for the hero anyway) female character for the hero to fall in love with, diverse secondary characters to meet a quota (poorly), mysterious "other" people (usually of color), outrageous scenarios that no one should survive, and yet the main couple does and lives happily ever after. This guy is basically the Dan Brown of Indiana Jones-type action/adventure novels.

Amazonia

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