Amazonia

Anne Patchett's book State of Wonder has been a darling of the critics this year.  For me, not so much.  I couldn't decide whom I disliked the most in this morally challenged group of characters (See my posting of 10/25).  Perhaps it's shallow of me, and I'm not capable of grasping the intellectual insights that others seem to find in this book.  On the other hand, maybe it's what I've always suspected: that literary critics are most enthusiastic about the books they understand the least.  If they can use enough erudite language to convince the rest of us that they know what they're talking about we'll believe that they really are smarter than the rest of us.  So it was with profound relief that I devoured one of James Rollins' earliest books on the same topic: Amazonia (#131). 

Dr. Nathan Rand's father disappeared into the remote Amazon jungle with the rest of his party four years ago.  When a member of that party stumbles out of the jungle at a tiny mission station he is sick and emaciated.  Despite the priest's efforts, the man dies before he can reveal who he is or where he came from.  The villagers are terrified of the man who bears a strange tattoo on his abdomen that marks him as belonging to the mysterios Ben-ali - the Blood Jaguars.  A medallion sewn into his clothing identifies him as Gerald Clark, an Army Ranger assigned to Carl Rand's missing exploratory party. There's just one problem: when Clark's body reaches the CIA laboratory in Langley, Virginia, he has two arms.  When he left with the expedition, he was missing an arm due to a sniper's bullet.  Where has he spent the last four years, and what has caused his arm to regenerate and yet left him ravaged with malignant tumors?  The government is determined to find out and recruits Nathan Rand from his own researches in Indian villages to join the CIA and Army Ranger joint task force in retracing Clark's footsteps to find out what really happened.  But they're not alone in the jungle pursuing the answers.  They are being tracked by both human and animal predators, the likes of which they have never encountered.  Can they survive long enough to penetrate to the heart of this mystery?

The parallels between Amazonia and State of Wonder are quite strong; scientist goes missing in remote Amazon jungle and is presumed dead, cannibals, snakes, a mysterious Indian tribe with botanical secrets that promise life-changing potential drugs to the outside world.  But I much prefer the more straight forward story telling in Amazonia. There are the twists and turns of the plot, a budding romance, a pandemic that can only be stemmed by the members of the expedition and genetic mutations.  Really scary genetic mutations.  The body count is extremely high in this book, as it is in Rollins' other thrillers, but also in keeping with Rollins' work, there is a strong scientific component that makes this a more intelligent thriller.  Unfortunately, this book predates the time when Mr. Rollings began to add a section at the end of his books discussing the scientific theory behind his plots, and recommended reading if you want to know more. 

All I can say is that I'm thinking very seriously before I book any tours in the Amazon!