Ross M. (Parrothead) reviewed on 8/14/2006 + 533 more book reviews

Darnton's best-selling adventure about scientists who discover a lost race of Neanderthals in Afghanistan is an obvious choice for libraries, so let us only observe that Jay O. Saunders does a good job of narration and move on to other thoughts. The back of the box reads, "Far away, in the mountains of Northern Asia, a guerrilla fighter vanishes, a schoolgirl is murdered, and an eminent Harvard paleontologist disappears." The listener hears about only the last of these three items, but it doesn't matter. Modern escape fiction, too jerky and dialog-heavy for unabridged recordings, lends itself to abridgment perfectly well without losing much stylistic integrity. Yes, one notices characters whizzing by without much development, but one suspects that there isn't all that much more in the full novel. Finally, although it would seem impossible to review this book without mentioning a certain other best-selling writer, we should do Darnton the favor of realizing that he falls squarely into the "lost race" tradition of H. Rider Haggard, Arthur Conan Doyle, and others from the turn of the century (though without the racism). A safe choice for all popular collections.
LIBRARY JOURNAL REVIEW

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