Review: Fun book with misleading book description
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 06 6, 2012
The book description says the archaeological crew made three mistakes: They should have kept the site a secret, they shouldn't have opened the structure and they should have somehow realized that something had been left behind to keep guard.Nonsense. The crew has already been on this dig for more than 2 years with no problems. And it's the standard goal of archeologists to open long-lost structures. And no monsters are keeping guard. (Supposedly, the creatures come to this place once a year.)But this year, they've stayed a day too long. On the final day of the seasonal dig, two separate groups of antiquities looters make their moves just as the creatures arrive to feed or mate or whatever (it's never really revealed). All the action takes place in just 24 hours, making it almost like a caper narrative.I liked this fast, fun read even though there were a couple of red herrings and answers to a couple crucial questions were left hanging. For instance, we never know which culture built the Plaza and the "secret society" of archeologists is breathlessly mentioned then dropped. One red herring is Rourke saying," The danger wasn't from the outside. These people were defending themselves from something that was already there," which is entirely false. Another red herring is Abigail Astrenzi's oh-so-important pollen analysis: The results are never revealed, even to the chief archeologist, and it basically makes no difference to the plot.Be aware, however, that the preparation of this manuscript was less than professional. That is, hyphens are used for dashes and single quote marks are used for double quote marks throughout. Also:- Spelling errors-typos are obvious: For example, "lighting" for lightning, "suite yourself" for suit yourself, "lent" and "leant" for leaned, "enrolment" for enrollment, "eyelids were fussed" for eyelids were fused and "pined in here" for pinned in here.- Homophones are often used incorrectly: Such as "knew orders" for new orders, "heard of camels" for herd of camels, "out of site" for out of sight, "feint with fear" for faint with fear, "there position" for their position and "damn had burst" for dam had burst.I'd probably give it 3-1/2 stars if I could, but since I can't, it'll have to be 3.