Product Description

“The name is Jones. Indiana Jones.”

He’s back. Everyone’s favorite globe-trotting, tomb-raiding, wisecracking archaeologist is finally at it again–hurtling headfirst into high adventure and relying on his wits, his fists, and his trusty bullwhip to get him out of deep trouble. But the man in the jaunty brown fedora and battered leather jacket is no ordinary digger in the dirt. From the fabled lost Ark of the Covenant to the legendary Holy Grail, he’s salvaged the world’s most amazing artifacts, while beating the baddest villains and defying the most breathtaking odds.

Now it’s 1957, the atomic age is in full swing, and McCarthy-era paranoia has the nation on edge. But for Indiana Jones, the Cold War really heats up when his latest expedition is crashed by a ruthless squad of Russian soldiers. Commanded by a sword-wielding colonel who’s as sinister as she is stunning, the menacing Reds drag an unwilling Indy along as they brazenly invade American soil, massacre U.S. soldiers, and plunder a top-secret government warehouse. Their objective: a relic even more precious–and powerful–than the mythic Ark, capable of unlocking secrets beyond human comprehension.

Fast thinking and some high-speed maneuvers help Jones turn the tables, and a one-in-a-million escape narrowly saves him from certain death. But when he’s tarred as a suspected spy and fired by his university, Indy thinks it may be time to hang up his hat.

Fate, however, has other plans. Suddenly the road to retirement takes a sharp detour when a colleague’s kidnapping leads Jones into the depths of the Amazon jungle on a desperate rescue mission. With a hot-headed teenage biker as his unlikely wing man and his vengeful new Russian nemesis waiting for a rematch, Indy’s back in the game–playing for a prize all the wonders of the world could never rival.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #187328 in Books
• Published on: 2008-05-20
• Released on: 2008-05-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 352 pages

About the Author
James Rollins is the bestselling author of eight previous novels: Subterranean, Excavation, Deep Fathom, Amazonia, Ice Hunt, Sandstorm, Map of Bones, and Black Order. He has a doctorate in veterinary medicine and his own practice in Sacramento, California. An amateur spelunker and a certified scuba enthusiast, he can often be found either underground or underwater.

www.jamesrollins.com

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
1546

RETURN ...

Francisco de Orellana stumbled the last steps toward the cliff ’s edge. At the lip of the precipice, he fell to his knees.The wide desert plain spread far below him. As the sun sank, he stared across that parched and rocky landscape, a reflection of his own soul. From this height he saw strange pictures carved into the desert floor, mon­strously large, stretching many leagues across the rocky plain, giant figures of monkeys, insects, snakes, along with flowers and strange angular shapes.

It was a God- cursed and demonic land. He should never have come.

Francisco tore the conquistador’s helmet from his head and tossed it behind him. While the sun gave up its last light, he planted his sword deep into the hot, sandy soil. The Spanish pommel and grip formed a cross against the setting sun.

Francisco prayed for release, for forgiveness, for salvation.

El dios querido, me perdona.

But there could be no forgiveness for the murder he had committed.

Blood bathed his gilded armor, dripped from his sword, and soiled his breastplate. The blood came from his own men, slaugh­tered at his own hand.

With his gold dagger, Francisco had slit the throats of the twin brothers, Iago and Isidro. He had used his sword to gut Gaspar like a pig and had come close to cleaving Rogelio’s head clean from his wide shoulders. He had stabbed Oleos in the back as he tried to flee; the same with Diego, cutting him off at the knees. The last man’s screams had chased Francisco to this perch atop the cliff.

But all had fallen silent.

The slaughter was complete.

Return ...

Francisco clawed at his face and dragged deep gouges. The command filled his skull. He sought to dig it out, cursing himself and the trespass he had committed. It would not let him go. The urge cut through his entrails like a rusted hook. It dug deeper than his spine, hooking him and trapping him.

For weeks he had fled that cursed place, sure he had escaped with a wealth to challenge kings, with wonders that would make queens weep. He had chests of gold and silver, another full of rubies and emeralds. A boat waited only a few days away, ported in a deepwater cove.

So close.

Return ...

He sank around his sword, begging for release. As this day had dawned, he had finally succumbed to the command etched into his bones. With each step away from that accursed valley, the word had grown louder in his skull. There was no escaping it. At last he found it impossible to continue, to take another step toward his ship. He became trapped in amber, unable to move forward. Only one path was left.

His men felt no such compunction. They chattered like boys, ex­cited to return home, reveling in how they’d spend their wealth, full of grand schemes and great dreams. They would not listen when he spoke of going back. They had fought him, urged him, and swore at him. They meant to take the treasure and continue to the ship, even if it meant leaving him behind.

And Francisco would have let them.

But in their greed, the men moved to take that which belonged to Francisco alone. That could not be! In a blind rage, he had cut them down like a scythe through wheat. Nothing must stop him, not even his own men.

Return ...

Now he was alone at last.

Now he could go back.

As the sun dropped below the far horizon and night fell, he gained his feet, retrieved his helmet, and pulled his sword from the soil. He turned, ready at last to obey the command. He headed down the dark slope–but movement drew his eye.

Below, figures shifted out of shadows and from behind tall boulders. They rose from holes and crawled from the limbs of twisted trees. They climbed toward him from all directions. He heard the knock of naked knees and the clop of stony heels.

An army, stripped of flesh . . . made of bones.

He paled and backed away, knowing now he was truly cursed.

The living dead closed toward him.

Come to drag him to Hell.

Where he truly belonged.

Still, he screamed to the night sky–not in terror, but in anguish, knowing he was forever damned. For he had failed, failed to obey the command burning in his skull. Merciless, relentless, the dead advanced toward him. His scream ripped into the night, but all Francisco de Orellana heard was one word.

Return ...


ONE

Yucatán Peninsula, 1957

Each stone told a story.

He edged on his stomach across the circular floor. Its surface had been carved into a Mayan calendar: a massive wheel made up of concentric rings of glyphs dug deep into the rock. Ahead, in the center, rose a large statue of a serpent’s head, cowled by stone feath­ers, its fanged mouth stretched wide, ready to swallow the unwary. The opening was large enough for a man to crawl through.

But what was in there?

He had to know.

If only he could reach it . . .

He tried to go faster, but the roof pressed against his back. He could not even lift up onto an elbow.The chamber required the sup­plicant to slither across the floor like a snake, perhaps in representa­tion of the Mayan god, Kukulkan, the feathered serpent. Except this current worshipper wore no feathers, only scuffed khaki pants, a faded leather bomber jacket, and a battered brown fedora.

Covered in mud, he crawled across the limestone floor. It had been raining in the Yucatán for the past week. The sun was just a distant memory. And now a tropical storm was due to strike this night, threatening to drive them away from the jungle- covered Mayan ruins that hugged the Yucatán coast.

“Indiana!” The call came from the stairs behind him.

“Little busy here, Mac!” he yelled back.

“The sun’s gone down, mate!” his friend urged, his British accent thickening with worry. “The winds are kicking up fierce. A coconut flew right past my head a minute ago.”

“It’s only a tropical storm!”

“Indy, it’s a hurricane!”

“Okay, so it’s a big tropical storm! Still busy down here. I’m not leaving till I see what’s hidden in the center of that statue. It has to be important.”

Indy had discovered the secret entrance to the temple two days earlier. It lay beneath a Mayan city complex on the central coast of the Yucatán. Hours of careful digging had been required to open the chute that led down to the inner chamber. Jungles still shrouded most of it, keeping it hidden for centuries from prying eyes and the sticky fingers of robbers.

Indy read the calendar wheel as he worked across the floor. The outer ring told the genesis myth of the Maya, as related from the Popul Vuh, the sacred book of the Maya. It listed the birth date of the world as:

13.0.0.0.0 4- Ahwa 8- Kumk’u

In the Gregorian calendar, this corresponded to August 13, 3114 BC. The inner rings continued the story of the K’iche Maya tribe, who had mostly settled Guatemala. Their writings were never seen this far north. The tale told of the birth and rise of Kukulkan, the feathered serpent god.

Indy ignored the ache in his knees and continued his crawl toward the innermost ring and the strange sculpture in the center.
The last ring spoke of the end of the Long Count calendar, the end of the world itself: December 21, AD 2012.

Fifty- five years from now.

Would the world truly end that day?

He continued onward. Plenty of time to worry about that later.

Indy reached the snake god’s head and lifted his lantern between the stone fangs. A small chamber opened beyond the mouth–but it had no floor. A pit dropped, like the dark throat of the stone ser­pent itself. It was deep, too dark to see the bottom, but a whispery rush echoed up to him.

Indy squirmed into the mouth and lowered his lantern. He caught a glint of silver, but it was still too dark to make out any details.

“Indiana!” Mac called from the stairs. “What are you doing?”

“What does it look like I’m doing?”

“It looks like you’re being swallowed by a snake!”

Indy shuddered at the thought. It was his worst nightmare. He twisted around and loosed his bullwhip from his shoulder. He tied the end around the handle of his lantern and lowered the light into the pit. The darkness fell back as the lantern descended. The walls of the well appeared to be raw polished limestone.

At last his light revealed the source of the silvery glint: water flowing past the bottom of the pit. The hole opened into one of the numerous underground rivers that ran through the porous lime­stone peninsula of the Yucatán. Hundreds of miles of such rivers and tunnels riddled the underworld here. The Maya considered such openings to be pathways to the next life.

Indy lowered the lantern a bit deeper. The river surged fast and fierce, storm- fed by the weeks of rain and the current typhoon. But through the rush of crystal- clear water, his lantern’s glow revealed a final glyph, carved into the bottom of the river channel.

He could almost make it out.

Indy sidled farther into the statue, half hanging into the pit, his arm outstretched. The glyph came into better focus. Indy recog­nized it. He had seen the same carving on the lintel above one of the temples outside. It was a figure of a man, upside down as if falling, symbolizing mankind’s birth into this world.

Or maybe it was more literal: a warning to be careful.

Too late. The lip of stone broke ...

Customer Reviews

It's Indie - what can i say!
I love Indiana Jones and since the movie and the book released together - i decided to read (listen) it...i must say that the i could literally see the characters jump out, the narrative and characterization is just fantastic!
a great thrill ride it was nice to see Indiana and Marian together ... and Mutt ... yep their son ... who is another Indie in the making ... watchout!!
worth read (listen) - BTW the movie is in my blockbuster queue ;-)

Not bad, Not great...
After re-reading the first three Indiana Jones movie adaptions, it came time to go through "The Crystal Skull". I'd seen the film twice, liking it better the second time, so I was hopeful that the novel would be a nice fill-in while we wait for the dvd coming soon.

I'm not really acquainted with the author, James Rollins, and his other work. It appears from the dedications and forward that he really likes the character, so that was good to see. I tend to enjoy a book more when I know it's written by a fan.

However, whereas the Raiders novel was a delight to read, and Temple's adaption seemed kind of ho-hum, this one fell more in line with Rob Macgregor's "Last Crusade" adaption. That being that it didn't stray too far off the beaten path from the screenplay or script that it came from.

Early on I wasn't really impressed with Rollins' writing. He tends to mention the same thought more than once, such as Indy constantly saying or thinking something like "Oh, that can't be good" or "It wasn't going to be good", etc etc. The mention of that line got repetitive. He also has Mutt and Indy's banter back and forth as pretty basic. Mutt constantly refers to Indy as "Old Man" and Indy calls him "kid". Ok, that's established. At least later they actually start to view each other as father and son and both characters start to think deeper about each other than just the fact that they're hanging out having this adventure together. Whereas the Raiders adaption had plenty of extra dialogue from the characters that wasn't in the film, this one is pretty close to being exact word for word as what you see in the movie. Nothing glaring, just nothing special added.

Good things? Yeah, the book has plenty. I really liked how it started out with the Spanish conquistador returning the skull after murdering his men while being driven mad by the skull itself. Spalko is just as devious and straightforward as in the film, and she is fleshed out further with a little bit about her background. We learn that she has done other alien autopsies, and the one she does with the Roswell specimen we get to "see" while she does it with her superiors. We also learn a little about her interest in the paranormal, which goes beyond simply doing a job for Stalin: she was considered a witch growing up in her native land. The Russian soldier Indy fought on the rocket car has a few fleeting scenes. His hatred of Indy goes beyond what was in the film and there are definitely times of tension as he flat out tries to kill Indy despite orders to the contrary.

Sadly, Mutt, Marion, Mac, and Oxley aren't fleshed out at all. We know about as much of them as was mentioned in the film. We never learned how it was that Indy's dad or Marcus Brody died, other than a quick insight in that it was about two years before the time of the movie. (I think the film claims that it was the same year or earlier that same year.)

Basically, this is a book for Indy fans and that's about it. It can stand on it's own as a single read, although it helps if you know some past history, especially between Marion and Indy. Another good thing is that you see these two start to feel for each other again a little more slowly in the book, which is good because it felt awful quick in the film.

If I were you, I'd wait to buy it used. Definitely not worth paying list price for, or even over $10. I still don't think Rollins is all that great a writer, but he did a sufficient job for "The Crystal Skull."

Well written.
This novelization is about as fun as the movie. There are a few things not in the movie (possibly deleted scenes or the author's own additions) that make this a good, easy read.