Raising Atlantis

Thomas Greanias

New York: Pocket Star, 2005. ISBN: 0-7434-9191-2. PP. 337

It seems anybody can write semi-literate crap these days, get it published, and then mislead naive suckers like me into buying it from an airport convenience store. My excuse is that I had nothing better to do during a long layover, and I was in a mood for some action that (a) would not tax my brain cells too much, (b) would not put me to sleep, and (c) would involve some Vatican conspiracy that seems de rigeur these days. After reading the blurb on the back of this book, I was convinced it would fit the bill precisely. Throwing in some U.S. government secret and possibly illegal installations on Antarctica could only make things even more fun, right?

Wrong. The story, such as it is, has been done before by so many adventure novels that it may at this point classify as one of the seven, now eight, classic plot-lines. Although I am not sure this is much of an improvement, at least the story has some recognizable elements: a pretty protagonist who (a) is privy to some unwholesome secrets that some powerful organization, usually the Catholic Church, wants to conceal, (b) is improbably skilled in anything from decoding ancient languages nobody has ever seen before (Atlantean, anyone? It's just like the Minoan Linear A, I swear), (c) has an unhealthy love interest in the male protagonist who seems to be a bastard (and this one, for a change, really has a few screws loose, if you ask me), but who sort of comes through in the end. If by coming through you mean either the destruction of humanity or, failing that, the destruction of an ancient pre-historic city.

Greanias piles it studiously high by taking us first on the obligatory whirlwind world tour, from Antarctica where a bunch of scientists mysteriously die and an ancient obelisk gets uncovered, to Nazca (Peru), where the male protagonist, Conrad, is whisked away by US special forces just when he's about the get creamed by the Peruvian police for illegal trafficking in ancient artifacts, to Aceh (Indonesia), where the pretty female protagonist, Serena, nearly gets herself killed by irate military types but is instead whisked away to the Vatican (Rome, Italy), and then back to Antarctica, where Conrad and Serena both find themselves whisked away to on the orders of Conrad's dad who is an unsmiling martinet who has managed to sneak in his dog on a mission of doubtful legality and utmost secrecy. Overall, there's a lot of whisking away and not enough art to justify the globe-trotting.

As one may have guessed from the title, the ancient Atlantis is beneath several miles of ice on Antarctica. There's a hugely important artifact there which, once set in motion, wipes out the slate (by destroying humanity in an act that would make the irascible Jehovah of "I will flood you, motherfuckers!" fame seem downright neighborly, albeit in the child-molester sort of way. Stopping the stupid machine involves putting square pegs into round holes and aligning some mysterious machinery with some constellations... or something. I admit to not following very closely that part of the plot, especially because even the characters carried a little instructional booklet around with them to help with the assembly. (Did I say that these instructions were written in a language nobody had ever seen but which Serena could decipher on sight?) Then a bunch of unfriendly people show up who display no concern either for the archaeological artifacts nor for the lives of the protagonists. In addition to these folks from Greenpeace, there are also some (not so) vaguely Middle-Eastern types who also run around killing everyone in sight. Naturally, the good guys triumph... I think.

Leaving aside the absolutely ridiculous notion that an ancient civilization (in fact, several, if I understood the narrative correctly) would develop on Atlantis and leave absolutely no trace anywhere else on the planet, I think at this point there's hardly a place on Earth that some crackpot has failed to claim as the location of the fabled Atlantis. Greanias is no worse than the rest in that respect and although I did find his tendency to kill off laboriously named characters refreshing, I just could not stomach the vapid story-telling. The narrative picks up occasionally but in the end left me cold. I did not care about the characters (Conrad was off-putting from the start and did not cut an attractive hero even in the end, what with all those "I am an Atlantean!" version of "I am the Chosen One!" and nearly wrecking it for us all, but even Serena with her holier-than-thou attitude that would make me want to kick her out of the Catholic Church, and I am an atheist).

I hear there's a sequel to this but I think I will skip it.

March 28, 2007