Review: Raising Atlantis by Thomas Greanias
06. Jul, 2009 
9 Comments
Hoo Boy.? This is a moment I’ve been dreading ever since cracking the first page of this … novel.
Cue Inigo Montoya:? ‘Allow me to explain’…
A few months ago I joined the Pocket Books group over at Ning (link).? Sarah Reidy founded the group to support and promote book blog tours.? My membership was accepted and I was looking forward to participating in my first blog tour (a group of bloggers review and discuss the same book).
It is a nice experiment with using blogs as a promotional vehicle for publishers.? My primary interest was peaked by the group illustration (an old Pocket Book cover) and continued because it afforded me the opportunity to critique outside of a vacuum.
I’m well aware that reviewing is essentially a solitary endeavor (reviews after all are just opinion), but in fairness I think one should continually check the zeitgeist.? It is all too easy to let things that have nothing to do with a book influence the review, all too easy to fall into the emotionalism of trashing for fun or praising with unbounded enthusiasm.
I want my reviews to be fair and informative.? If I really like something, there should be a reason for it.? If I really hate something, it should be justified.? If not, I’m just reviewing for myself and there’s no need to type it into the blog – my opinion is already well known inside my head.
Discussing things with other reviewers may not be the perfect way to create a check and balance on one’s own reviews, but other than return commentary from the author (which is pretty biased itself), I know of no other available system.
As I said, I was looking forward to working on my first book from the group when a package arrived in the mail from Simon & Schuster.? Inside was THE ATLANTIS LEGACY, a trade paperback ($12.00) from Pocket Books that combined two novels – Raising Atlantis and The Atlantis Prophecy both by Thomas Greanias.? (Which was NOT the first book for the book blog tour)
The included promotional materials made it clear that this re-release was provided in anticipation of the third novel in the series – The Atlantis Revelation – forthcoming this August.
I had no direct connection with the folks at S&S, nor did their communication reference the Book Tour group or Sarah:? I supposed there might be some connection between the two but it took a while to discover that Sarah was now working over there and had ported her Ning group contacts list to that job.? The PR folks went down the list of preferences and dutifully began shipping books out.
Herein lies my conundrum: I want to continue to receive books from these people AND I want to do an honest review.? However, I suspect that the PR folks at S&S will not be too happy with what is to follow.
I know I’m making you all wade through a bunch of personal BS before getting to the review, but I want to convey the fact that while I have written an honest review of the book, I did so with some trepidation and with the advance knowledge that doing so might cut off a source of review product:? not that I think the PR department is going to punish me or to imply that they are only seeking positive reviews – but because their job is to sell.? I can only hope that they’ll send me something good next time, which will give me a chance to demonstrate that I’m going to be fair.
In the long run I decided that being fair to potential readers trumped my desire for free books and so, without further time-wasting -
Raising Atlantis
Publishers Weekly said “Greanias keeps the pace breakneck and the coincidences amazing.”
I strongly suspect that this is reviewers code for “and totally unbelievable”.
RA is a general audience, beach-read pot-boiler, supposedly in the vein of The DaVinci Code.? X Files for the masses, von Daniken for those who have no truck with all of that flying saucer nonsense.
In brief:? the lost continent of Atlantis is buried under the Antarctic ice cap.? It really does contain a city that was built by space aliens (the ones responsible for inspiring our civilization which is, you know, the reason why the Mayans and the Egyptians both built pyramids).? That city really does contain a gigantic pyramid (two miles high, natch).? That pyramid really does contain the answers to all of our questions about life, the universe and everything (though I was mightily surprised that the number 42 was not inscribed upon its walls).? And, of course, our Indiana Jones stand-in – Conrad Yeats – man-of-action, discredited paleosomethingorother expert, who just so happens to be an Atlantean, is called in to EXPLAIN EVERYTHING when the gigantic pyramid under the ice is discovered by a US military expedition in Antarctica.
Also called in – by the Vatican no less (personal request of the Pope, of course) is “Mother Earth”, a defrocked nun, uber environmentalist and patron of lost causes, who also just so happens to be an expert in deciphering the original Atlantean script because, you know, once we get inside the giant pyramid under the ice, there just might be some stuff on the walls we might want to decipher.
It isn’t until we’re about half-way into this thing that the radical Muslims show up, but since they’re just stereotypical foils to the Vatican’s interests (not to mention convenient red shirts), they’re hardly worth mentioning.? Other than the fact that the cast of characters rounded up for this novel looks like it was drawn from a checklist from the How To Write A Conspiracy Novel for Dummies guide book.
I was extremely grateful to Greanias for one thing.? I learned – within the first few pages – that Australia has moved closer to Antarctica than Chile, making it the ‘closest country to Antarctica’. This is fortuitous, since Australia’s proximity is the primary reason for the Australian Army’s interest in the goings on down under downunder.
You certainly can’t fault the novel for trying (my patience) to rope in just about every conceivable lost city of Atlantis trope under the Antarctic sun.? The problem with the novel is not so much the (virtually unbelievable) premises as it is with the execution.? As another reviewer pointed out ‘you’re supposed to write about what you know: you can’t just watch a Discovery Channel documentary’.
It becomes painfully clear – almost from the beginning – that the author knows little, if anything, about: the military, paleoarchitecture, the Vatican, Antarctica, geography, operations aboard an aircraft carrier, the physical properties of ice, the history of AK-47s, radical Islamic wannabes or just about anything else touched on in the book.
And yes, the coincidences are truly mind-boggling in their convenience.
What annoyed me the most, however, was the sheer physical impossibility of so much of the coincidental action: just a few examples ought to suffice:? Yeats is dropped to the ground from a distance of 50 feet and only has the wind knocked out of him (well, a little bruising too); the commander of an aircraft carrier lashes himself to the deck rails with a chain used to tie down jet fighters in order to survive a near capsizing from a tidal wave caused by the catastrophic melting of Antarctica;? and any number of disarmings and escapes take place in manners that, if you were to block out the action (as if for a play), you would immediately discern needed to be changed, because they just couldn’t happen.
(Towards the end, Yeats is tied with his hands behind a giant pillar and, in order to escape, he manages to fish his sunglasses out of a shirt pocket with his mouth:? maybe, but every time I try to do that the pocket moves further away…, uses the earpiece of the sun glasses to retrieve a Zippo lighter from another pocket, and somehow manages to get the lighter to slide down his arm, so he can catch it in his hand and – despite the pain – uses the lighter to burn the rope around his wrists.? Go ahead – try it.? The fate of the world and your own survival depends on your escaping in just that manner in the next minute or two…)
And yet, despite the – impossible physical actions, a deus X on nearly every other page, the unbelievable settings, the incorrect portrayal of organizational operations, the bad geography and the completely stereotyped characters, there remains a compelling quality to this novel.? A factor that drew me on from page to page, a technique that kept me thinking that surely, this must be the concluding chapter.? (The ‘ending’ took nearly ten chapters…)
I finally identified that quality while re-watching Plan 9 From Outer Space.? It is the indefinable something that turns the truly awful into a favorite episode of Mystery Science Theater, the same compulsion that makes us worry an infected tooth, watch car wrecks or delay a visit to the bathroom because, you know, the longer we wait, the better it will feel once we relieve ourselves.
I’ve not yet read the second book – The Atlantis Prophecy – with the exception of the opening chapter. From that chapter, it is clear that Greanias, having dispensed with his re-write of the DaVinci Code has now turned his attention to National Treasure and the Masons…
Hmmm.? How about Minus 2 Stars.
The Atlantis Legacy (Raising Atlantis, The Atlantis Prophecy, excerpt from The Atlantis Revelation) by Thomas Greanias and here
Pocket Books
$12.00
The Atlantis Revelation is to be released on 8/11/09
PLEASE SUBSCRIBE TO MY FEED
I got this one in the mail too, but I’m handing it off to someone else. While I love SciFi and Fantasy, this book didn’t spark my interest.
Given the popularity of the Harry Potter series, which solved 90% of its major conundrums via “amazing coincidences,” maybe this is the new “how we do things around here”?
lol.
I’m developing two new “pet peeves”
well known writers who offer misleading blurbs and writers/editors who let physical impossibilities leak through into the finished product. (The fantastical excepted.)
You missed the good stuff. The second one, The Atlantis Prophecy, is light years better than Raising Atlantis. I followed it as a web series in 2001 long before “National Treasure” came out. You should read it next to Dan Brown’s Lost Symbol before making up your mind. Can’t wait for The Atlantis Revelation.
Arthur – you mean to tell me this was availablee online and you actually read the second one?
Nothing would induce me to do so. I don’t want to seem mean-spirited, but it should never have been published, let alone gone on with two sequels.
I read the first chapter or two of the Prophecy. Historical innaccuracy at the very beginning kind of killed any chance it had.
I’m not a literary critic, but I am a constitutional scholar and historian. What inaccuracies in the first chapter of The Atlantis Prophecy are you referring to? Because the research is extraordinary and includes details only those of us who have read the diaries of Washington’s physician would be familiar with. Mr. Grenias most definitely went the second mile here. You did not. You have already made up your mind and have gone so far as to reject a book you admit you didn’t bother finishing, and say should not have been published. You call yourself a reviewer? Sign me up, because publishers are wasting great books on you.
Arthur,
the review was all about the first book; I note that you did not offer any challenges in regards to that one.
As for my comments regarding #2: I no longer have the book (I passed it on to others who like car wrecks) and am therefore not able to offer you specifics. If I recall, my objections to the first chapter or two had nothing whatsoever to do with Washington’s doctor.
But back to the original review: that first one offered a full nine innings of strike outs. With time and dollars at a premium these days, if you don’t get me interested your first at-bat, I’m not going to continue. There are far too many other GOOD novels out there.
Oh and btw – when I make statements regarding accuracy of an historical or scientific nature, I check before putting it in print.
I recently got this book from a used book store and even though I thought it was totally stupid and written poorly, I did finish it just to see how low the author could sink. When I found your review, I laughed all the way through it, nodding my head, “Yes, yes.” This book is a testament to so many things — none of them good writing or good storytelling. It is a testament to the “insider network” in publishing where bad writers and bad stories still get published, and someone’s idea of a book that will appeal to the zanies. Those of us who appreciate good writing and interesting “hypothetical” situations have been duped into spending money for this piece of trash. Thomas Greanias/Pocket Books: I want my money back! And I want to be compensated for the time I wasted reading this piece of junk, hoping that it would improve.
Thanks for that Hattie. Tho I don’t really think there is a cabal…