Catacombs [Hardcover]

This was a promising idea for a story - parts technothriller, paranormal thriller and Indiana Jones, but it never quite works. The biggest problem is that it takes most of the book for the purported heroes to reach the catacombs - with the book being less about the mysterious catacombs than the travails of land-travel in Africa (imagine watching an episode of the X-Files in which Mulder and Scully spend most of the episode trying to get a rental car). Then there are the characters - I'm not trying to be literary here, but you don't need to be into Henry James to appreciate good character, like "Raiders" without Indiana Jones, or a generic James Bond. There are several characters who seem like they're supposed to be the heroes - a diplomat, the archeologist, an agent - but never get to the forefront or anywhere near it (of course, it doesn't help that there's no story for them to get to). The African dictator is also an interesting figure - a distinguished and respected revolutionary slowly verging into militancy and autocracy (imagine Nelson Mandela slowly morphing into Robert Mugabe). Though he's willing to trade the stones with anybody for nukes, we know he's got one target on his mind - South Africa. The story never makes clear how willing he is to unleash nukes or simply hold them over Preatoria. Of course the biggest hole in the Catacombs are the Catacombs themselves. The author describes them and their inhabitants only briefly, and hints at how advanced the Zan were (a mysterious force preserves everything within - not even milk goes bad) but then seems to ignore them completely. We get barely a glimmer of what the archeologists must have learnt by the time the book starts. What a botch.