Meg Review

Meg by Steve Alten

(from the book jacket)

On a top-secret dive into the Pacific Ocean’s deepest canyon, Jonas Taylor found himself face-to-face with the largest and most ferocious predator in the history of the animal kingdom.  The sole survivor of the mission, Taylor is haunted by what he’s sure he saw but still can’t prove exists – Carcharodon megalodon, the massive mother of the great white shark.  The average prehistoric Meg weighs in at twenty tons and could tear apart a Tyrannosaurus rex in seconds.

Written off as a crackpot suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, Taylor refuses to forget the depths that nearly cost him his life.  With a Ph. D. in paleontology under his belt, Taylor spends years theorizing, lecturing, and writing about the possibility that Meg still feeds at the deepest levels of the sea.  But it takes an old friend in need to get him to return to the water, and a hotshot female submarine pilot to dare him back into a high-tech miniature sub.

Diving deeper than he ever has before, Taylor will face terror like he’s never imagined, and what he finds could turn the tides bloody red until the end of time.

Meg is exactly what you are expecting it to be.  A highly improbable plot where a megalodon has survived and is now terrorizing the oceans.  You have all the usual characters: the save the shark crew, the kill the shark crew, the expert no one listens to until it’s too late.  There aren’t too many surprises.  You are not going to be blown away by the great writing or intricate plotting.  But if you are picking up the book in the first place I don’t really think that’s what you’re looking for.  It was what I was in the mood for at the time so I enjoyed reading it.  It has the appropriate amount of people getting eaten, bloody scenes, people getting in each other’s way and good plans going wrong along with some mayhem and things exploding.  There were even some shark facts thrown in.  And a few people who you honestly didn’t know if they would get eaten or not.  Good stuff.  If you like that sort of thing.