Review Rating
With the October 2004 review, we began rating the books on the basis of one to four trowels;
one trowel= don’t bother, to four trowels= run right out to your local book store and buy the hard cover!
Excavation by James Rollins
Reviewed on: September 1, 2024
HarperCollins Publishers: New York
2000 (PB)
In this very early effort by thriller writer James Rollins, the reader is introduced into the world of archaeologist Professor Henry Conklin and his nephew and doctoral candidate, Sam. Leading a small crew of excavators in the Andean highlands of Peru, Henry unearths mummified remains in the Cloud Ruins site. The body, which appears to have been much taller than the average Inca, could well provide proof of his long-held but academically controversial theory that a highly developed indigenous culture preceded the Incan invasion of those highlands and that such magnificent sites such as Machu Picchu were the creations of this earlier culture. He has the remains shipped back home where he joins an old friend (and lover), Johns Hopkins University forensic pathologist Dr. Joan Engel in scientifically analyzing the remains. Much to his surprise—and dismay—a Dominican crucifix is found around the mummy’s slashed throat. He has unearthed the remains of a Dominican missionary, apparently killed by the natives some five hundred years earlier. Archaeological evidence for the existence of a pre-Incan culture still eludes Henry.
Meanwhile, back in the Peruvian highlands, situated in a saddle between two Andean peaks, Sam Conklin continues to lead a small group of grad student researchers and a native dig crew in unearthing further secrets of the Cloud Ruins site. Their efforts reveal structure buried below the surface ruins that could possibly support Henry Conklin’s pre-Incan theories. But they also expose a sealed subterranean chamber which had apparently been locked away by Dominican missionaries, with Latin inscriptions warning against disturbing what lay within.
The stage would seem set for a rollicking archaeology adventure: two engaging archaeologist heroes, their adventurous lovers, a mysterious mcguffin (the mummified Dominican missionary), and the locked chamber in a subterranean pyramid! But unfortunately, the plot of Excavation wanders off into an overabundance of bewildering directions. There are nefarious modern-day Dominicans who seek eternal life (with the help of nanobots arriving in a meteor shower hundreds of years ago); there are Shining Path-type guerillas in the nearby jungle; there are modern-day Inca who may or may not be five hundred years old; and there are sub-human creatures living in the subterranean caverns who give our heroes and heroines all kinds of problems—picture the Morlocks in H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine!
These elements made for a messy story line and presented a perfect example of what the late author Hal Goodwin called the ODTAA school of writing: One Damn Thing After Another.
Fortunately, author Rollins (who has sold a bazillion books) matured as an author of adventure yarns over the past twenty years and I’ve loved whiling away the hours reading his (up to now) sixteen volume Sigma Force series. But one trowel for his early Excavation.
