An Action-Packed
Adventure…But Psychics?
At its heart, The
Amazon Code is action/adventure, with all the extreme feats and unlikely events
that this genre implies. Set in the
Amazon (obviously), it becomes a veritable catalog of the gruesome ways someone
might die in that world – hostile natives, vicious creatures, unforgiving
habitat. Then, add to that mix a shadowy
and utterly ruthless organization committed to your demise and the stage is set
for some hair-raising action.
The potential reader should view this book’s listed genre
with skepticism, in my opinion. On Amazon
(the online store, not the region), the book is listed as Psychics, as well as
Action & Adventure. I don’t get
it. With the references to neuroscience,
as well as the author’s synopsis mentioning “emerging science,” I was thinking
technothriller. For example, the clues
that drive our protagonist, Harvey “Ben” Bennett, to the Amazon come from
fMRI-based videos of people dreaming, a capability that appears close at hand. But perhaps the author went with the psychic
category because the link to science is weak with more hand-waving in crucial
places (how did they get that map?) and niggling errors (e.g., the incorrect definition
of fMRI) than one would hope.
The second precautionary note for potential readers is that
you may want to start with book 1 – always a good idea, but maybe more so for
this series, because you are joining an on-going story. Ben is single-mindedly pursuing a ruthless
organization he faced in book 1, even though he’s totally unsuited to the
task. He’s a park ranger. The villains are part of a clandestine group
unencumbered by ethics and at ease with the use of extreme violence. Hopefully, his obsession is explained in the
first book, because the attempt to attribute it to his personality in this book
just doesn’t work (“Ben was just being Ben — stubborn, boorish, and reclusive”). Lots of people share those traits, but none
of them go to the Amazon based on a rumor, untrained and unprepared, hoping to
form a rag-tag team with the right mix of skills to win the day. Ben, however, does. It’s good suspense, but a bit inexplicable even
for action/adventure.
The Amazon Code also has the somewhat
unusual distinction of being loaded with action – chases, gun fights, grisly
deaths – and yet, it feels slow. Part of
the reason is that chapters are written from the perspective of different
characters, so with each change in point of view, the reader gets another
recounting of the hopelessness of their situation. Additionally, each character recounts events
from their lives in general. The
technique can greatly aid character development, but it’s overused and
sometimes makes little sense. I was
never sure, for example, how either Ben or Julie saw their relationship, beyond
the fact that they thought it was something they couldn’t escape (“Hours of
arguing and slamming doors had taught her that there was nothing that could
force them apart, except, ironically, death”).
Is that supposed to be romantic?
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