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A review by trevert
Hell's Aquarium by Steve Alten
3.0
Again with the split rating, because judged on literary merits alone this is probably a 2 - The characters are stock, the "love story" is cackle-inducing, and it's overall cheesy as hell - but it's a 4 on sheer big summer fun factor, because Steve Alten writes great giant monster shark books. When you've got a gift, run with it, I say. The Meg books are the written equivalents to Syfy's Saturday Night made-for-TV monster movies. Any day now I expect a new Meg book to be titled Megnado.
The story is simple - A wealthy evil Arab sheik is building the world's largest aquarium theme park of deadly prehistoric beasts, and not only does he want to buy the new Megs for it, but he also wants our hero to lead a deep sea expedition back to the underwater Pelucidar of the series to drag up more weird stuff like Liopleurodons.
The mission may as well read, "Dive into the secret under-ocean and bring back everything that tries to eat your sub."
And... That's basically that. If you've read one of these before, you know you're getting the standard ingredients - a "love story" that appears out of nowhere with zero chemistry between characters, metronomic chapter structure that alternates between what the main characters are doing and what "Newly introduced vacation family from Vermont" is doing before they get eaten, bad guys who may as well twirl their mustaches and pet fluffy white cats, and a whole lot of giant shark action. God forbid I don't want to sound like the Standard Angry Feminist, but it's worth noting that Alten's female characters come in exactly Two Types from book to book - Either a histrionic, unpredictable, slightly insane woman that the hero is inexplicably in love with, or a Mata Hari villainess who's a psychotic ball of emotional frenzy spackled over with cool and cruel disdain, but who's also secretly in love with the hero only to be passed over in favor of the "good" girl who's also batshit crazy because, "Hey, women, ya know..?" ...but at least she doesn't drop victims into giant shark tanks.
OK, so it's not a paragon of progressive social virtues either, but what it is, is a whole lotta fun, a 70's drive-in monster movie that somehow escaped into modern times. By the time the deep-sea rescue operation starts, you expect Charleton Heston to come swinging in hanging from a helicopter ladder and grimacing about how this was a bad day to quit amphetamines. Most bodaciously excellent beach reading.
The story is simple - A wealthy evil Arab sheik is building the world's largest aquarium theme park of deadly prehistoric beasts, and not only does he want to buy the new Megs for it, but he also wants our hero to lead a deep sea expedition back to the underwater Pelucidar of the series to drag up more weird stuff like Liopleurodons.
The mission may as well read, "Dive into the secret under-ocean and bring back everything that tries to eat your sub."
And... That's basically that. If you've read one of these before, you know you're getting the standard ingredients - a "love story" that appears out of nowhere with zero chemistry between characters, metronomic chapter structure that alternates between what the main characters are doing and what "Newly introduced vacation family from Vermont" is doing before they get eaten, bad guys who may as well twirl their mustaches and pet fluffy white cats, and a whole lot of giant shark action. God forbid I don't want to sound like the Standard Angry Feminist, but it's worth noting that Alten's female characters come in exactly Two Types from book to book - Either a histrionic, unpredictable, slightly insane woman that the hero is inexplicably in love with, or a Mata Hari villainess who's a psychotic ball of emotional frenzy spackled over with cool and cruel disdain, but who's also secretly in love with the hero only to be passed over in favor of the "good" girl who's also batshit crazy because, "Hey, women, ya know..?" ...but at least she doesn't drop victims into giant shark tanks.
OK, so it's not a paragon of progressive social virtues either, but what it is, is a whole lotta fun, a 70's drive-in monster movie that somehow escaped into modern times. By the time the deep-sea rescue operation starts, you expect Charleton Heston to come swinging in hanging from a helicopter ladder and grimacing about how this was a bad day to quit amphetamines. Most bodaciously excellent beach reading.