The Meg

I never expect action movies to be books. Like some of them you know about. I always knew Jaws was a book. Jurassic Park. Duh. Bourne Identity. Everyone knows that, right? Die Hard is based on a book and I didn't know that for ages. The Relic is based on a book that's actually only the beginning of an interesting (and lengthy) series I need to get back to. But The Meg? Would anyone have guessed that was a book unless they knew about it? (It was originally written in 1997, after all.) 

So when one of my favorite people mentioned it was a book series, I had to check it out. Unlike other books that got turned into movies, this one feels like it was meant to always be a movie. The edition I read is the revised one. I'm not sure what was changed from the original, though I did read reviews that said the revised is better. 

It's a fast read that could still use a better editor, but like action movies, it's fun and I'm not exactly expecting great literature here. I kept turning the pages, wanting to see what would happen next. 

If you have seen the movie and want something similar, however, this is a completely different story. 

My biggest criticism is that it lacks a lot of character development. The female characters in particular suffer. Alten doesn't write as horribly about women as some do, but both his female leads are on the ballbusting side and not in good ways. The romance between Jonas and Terry comes literally out of nowhere and doesn't feel natural at all. Although honestly, that makes it even more like an actual action movie, so in that way, it works. There's one sentence where Jonas's soon to be ex-wife Maggie and his new love interest Terry are described as "the blonde reporter and the Asian beauty." For literally zero reason. That entire chunk of the sentence could have been left out and the sentence would have had the same meaning. I would have also ditched some of the descriptive stuff for the Japanese cast in the revision, just like the BSC did with constant mentions of Claudia's almond-shaped eyes. What people didn't bat an eye at in the 80s and 90s doesn't work now. 

Overall, it's a fun read, but some things are dated and others just show that this is the author's first work. I'm hoping his character development, especially for the women, improves as I read more of the series. In a weird way, the flaws do work for the book though, because they lend to the action movie feel. 

The revised edition includes a prequel at the end, which was written in 2011. It tells Jonas's backstory, though you already know most of it from the book itself. The most important takeaway is that there are more prehistoric things still alive than just megs.