Big Ed's PlaceThis was published? (a negative review)
So my family passes books around. Sometimes they’re recommended, and sometimes they’re just “are you interested?”
That’s how I got an action thriller from my mother, The Secret of Excalibur, by Andy McDermott. She said it was “too James Bondy” but might be good as an airplane book for me. So I started it on the recent airplane ride and it was… bad. I couldn’t believe how bad.
Furthermore, it was obvious my opinion was in the minority. The book is the third in a series, and there’s at least a fourth, according the the back cover. It’s published by Bantam Books, which is a Random House division, and was originally a hardback release instead of straight to paperback. Additionally, the cover has glowing blurbs from major UK magazines.
But I don’t think my opinion is wrong, so I figured I’d provide a full critique, particularly of the plot elements. Perhaps that’ll be of interest to readers here, in ‘what not to do.’ Or maybe it’ll just be quietly infuriating to realize that this got published when so many works without these problems do not. Obviously, I’ll have to reveal spoilers, so the whole negative review is behind the cut…
First, I should state that the action thriller genre has certain tropes that I’m not going to attack. The book is full of gun battles where expert soldiers don’t hit the good guys. People get knocked out with a single punch to the head. Secret agents have almost amazing knowledge of esoteric topics and so on. The tropes allow credibility to be stretched, though it shouldn’t be broken.
So I didn’t object to one of the three main characters. Eddie Chase is the stereotypical British Secret Service agent. Yeah, he’s more working class and rough and tumble than Bond, but he’s not outside of the genre trope.
I did have problems with one aspect of the other main character, Nina Wilde. She’s the archeologist chasing after artifacts like Lara Croft or Indiana Jones. She’s smart and athletic and adventurous and flirtateous with Eddie, her fiance. But part of the flirtation is constant jokes that she’s not as attractive as Lara Croft. Okay–the banter’s good right up until she has to pretend to be a high class “model quality” Moscow hooker and pulls it off with only 2 hours of makeup and styling.
Err, go to my gallery page and see what “model quality” means for East European women. They’re gorgeous. So is the character plain or not? Either the banter is misplaced, or the scene with her dressed up doesn’t work.
The third major character, Mitchell, drove me more crazy. He’s a Ph.D. in nuclear physics, a former submariner, an expert in hand-to-hand martial arts, and a charmer with the ladies. He also turns out to be both a field agent and the leader of a major top secret operation. So… when did he have time to do all of this? Becoming an expert requires substantial time and dedication. Just adding up the years makes it hard to believe. But the kicker is him being both a field agent and the leader of a major top secret operation. Sorry–nothing works that way in cover ops or anything. Team leadership is a major enterprise and more than consumes one’s full time. It’s just not plausible that an agent in the field could have time to also be directing people back in the home shop. So he violate my willing suspension of disbelief, even for an action thriller.
He also says he works for DARPA. Sorry–I know DARPA. I’ve worked DARPA programs. No way is this guy a DARPA guy.
So let’s go to the MacGuffin. The plot revolves around an attempt to recover Excalibur, which turns out to be a room temperature superconductor capable of channeling “Earth energy” from ley lines when held by someone with the genes from Atlantis that gave them bioenergy to facilitate the charging. Okay… if you’re going to be a thriller, you have an obligation to get the gadgetry right. Clancy does, which makes many of his books redeemable. So do almost all other authors I can think of. But this is way beyond credibility.
If it’s a superconductor, then the “Earth energy” lines have to be electromagnetic. Which means we’d already know about them. If bioenergy was part of it, it’d also be detectable by electromagnetic means. The only purpose of this convoluted MacGuffin is that it forces the characters to not only recover Excalibur, but also get it to specific spots on the planet with specific people in order to fully use its powers. That’s a pretty ham-handed way of driving the plot.
So let’s move onto the plot. It begins pretty much according to genre. The characters gather, they’re brought the quest, the guy bringing the quest is killed by the bad guys, and thus begins a race to find the clues to the treasure before the bad guys.
In this case, the clues are the parts of the sword Caliburn, which Merlin forged before Excalibur as a test case. Both swords are this super magic superconductor metal, but Caliburn isn’t as good (and it’s broken to boot). The heroes do succeed in getting enough of Caliburn to find the map inscribed on the blade. The map will lead them to the “real” tomb of the real King Arthur, where 10th century monks hid him and Excalibur.
Wait a minute. Inscribed on Caliburn? We have a legendary weapon that only Merlin could forge, and some 10th century monks inscribed a map onto the blade? Err, how? Did Merlin leave them the secret recipe for the blade?
That doesn’t even begin to address the question, “why?” which is explicitly asked in the book and unsatisfactorily answered. Maps to buried treasure are made for a reason, and most mapmakers aren’t doing it just to enable treasure seekers in future centuries. This is, alas, a flaw in most adventure “follow the clues” stories.
So the heroes find the pieces, reconstruct the map, brave some nasty traps at Arthur’s tomb set by those same 10th century monks (again–why? If you don’t want people to enter the tomb, just bury it. If you do want people, find some way that’s straightforward that only your buddies will know. A simple hidden locked door should suffice as long as you don’t go inscribing maps on other swords…). The baddies show up, and we have our fourth car chase, with bullets flying, of the first half of the novel.
Complete aside–why do modern day adventurers always insist on following the trapped passageways? If you know where a buried tomb is, bring in the heavy digging equipment. Traps can be avoided by breaching the back wall. Just saying…
Second complete aside–why, in adventure novels and movies, do the heroes insist on braving all those traps when being chased by the bad guys? Odds are, the baddies are not going to know how to bypass them any better than you are. How about just hiding near the entrance and watching for them, while waiting for the reinforcements to arrive? If the baddies try to brave the traps, they either fail or do your work for you. Meanwhile, the cavalry and all that heavy digging equipment is on its way. Seems smarter to me…
Back to the novel’s plot. The heroes get away and then they give the sword to Mitchell so he can take it to DARPA for analysis. Except he takes it to the baddies, which Eddie and Nine realize because he gets in a cab instead of a Government car. They give chase, the bad guys get away with Excalibur, Mitchell says he’s a “triple agent” and he’s playing along with the baddies because he needs to get in their secret lair. The baddies have built a superweapon that needs Excalibur to work.
Okay–the superweapon stuff is stretching it and hokey, but I can roll with it, just like rolling with some Bond plots.
What I can’t roll with is how after they retrieve the sword from the Russian Baddie’s lair, Mitchell steals it again. He turns out to be the big baddie, who plans to use Excalibur to power his own superweapon and start WWIII.
That’s when I threw the book against the wall. Why did Mitchell need to get into the Baddie’s lair if he had his own copy of the superweapon? The as-written action sequence had him bursting in, engaging in massive gun fights, and them running off before he could look around. The author completely threw away any need for this plot twist.
Which leads to the insult to the reader’s intelligence. Mitchell had the weapon to take back to “DARPA”! There was absolutely no need for the entire “go into the Baddie’s lair” action loops, other than to consume a bunch of chapters. All Mitchell would have had to do was take it to “DARPA” in a government car. The other characters weren’t going with him and once he’d actually gotten to the US, there’s no way they could have followed him (made clear in a later action loop where they need inside help and a lot of clues to find him).
I don’t ask for much from my James Bond wannabe stories, but the plot holes have to be smaller than that. Particularly in a piece of work professionally published and edited. Which I have to wonder about, given I found some typos and some bad paragraph breaks. These plot errors and contradictions weren’t Hitchcock’s icebox moments–I caught them immediately (hence book becoming projectile against the wall). And if I did, an editor should have.
Beyond that… well, I found the action scenes incredibly repetitive to the point where the car chases and fights all blurred together. I started skipping through pages–”Yep, still in the chase. Yep, still in the chase. Yep, still in the chase. Oh, we’re done. Now we’ll get some story or plot.” Like excessive sex scenes in erotica, I hit the point where I wasn’t enjoying them and just wanted them to be over.
I don’t recommend the book. Furthermore, I’m frustrated that it’s published, and apparently successful, when authors I know who are much better can’t find agents. But, unfortunately, that’s the way it is.
Only related to your “threw the book against the wall” comment, and your comments on DARPA:
It is tough reading stories which revolve around things you understand better than the author. I don’t read computer-oriented stories, except by a handful of authors. I found The DaVinci Code a reasonably entertaining book, mostly because of my ignorance. My wife took Angels & Demons away from me the third time I threw it across the room.
In fairness, a large number of people read books to *avoid* thinking. This is, evidentally, not you or I. We can’t help ourselves. And that’s why I rarely read bestsellers. :-\
I sometimes read books or watch movies to ‘avoid thinking’ but that only increases my irritation when I lose my ‘willing suspension of disbelief.’ Action films are the best example–I like them, but I lose it completely when I hit a stunt that I know isn’t physically possible.
Wow. It’s been awhile, but I’ve read this book, as well as the two before it, and I remember enjoying them all. Enough to buy the fourth book, anyway.
Having said that, I can’t argue with one thing you’ve said. Frankly, the third book was my least favorite of the first three. I guess I just tend not to analyze my reading quite as much as you do, while I’m actually reading it. I save that for after the fact.
Anyway, I haven’t actually READ that fourth book yet, but trust me, if the downward trend continues, I won’t be buying the fifth.
I can easily see how the earlier books would have been better–the gimmicks wouldn’t have worn out their welcome yet and it might have been less formulaic. Series decay is pretty common.
And you are blessed for not doing the analysis while you read.