When the newest Indiana Jones movie, "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull", it kind of had a bit of a feel like the newer Star Wars trilogy had. it was good, but not quite on the level of the original trilogy. Sorry, but it just wasn't quite there.
Don't get me wrong: I enjoyed it. But in some strange way, it makes you appreciate (and long for) the originals that much more.
So it was that I began to long for more. I wanted to see the other movies again, and decided to get the new DVD releases of the films. I began to watch them quite a bit more, and it was like revisiting a part of my childhood. You see, I think that the first movie that I ever saw was Raiders of the Lost Ark. It was in Loch Sheldrake, New York. If memory serves correctly, the advertised price was $2.50. Can you remember the last time you saw a new movie in a theater? I think I'm dating myself here. I was scared to death at some points - particularly the end scene, when the Ark is opened up, and all of the bad guys who could not contain their curiosity had their eyes and interiors burned out, while Indy and Marion kept their eyes tightly shut, and avoided the worst.
Yes, it was a bit like revisiting some childhood past, yet it was a bit different, as well. Those movies are enjoyable as an adult, and I found myself really enjoying them, with a newfound appreciation, admittedly. I began to long for more Indiana Jones.
Does that make me a bit of an overgrown child?
Perhaps.
But I was enjoying it, and that's no crime, right? After all, Indiana Jones is a hero that we can actually believe in. A true good guy, yet with a kind of dark side to him, as well. He can be greedy, and is very sarcastic. He seems to have a bit of what we might call a nerdy side to him, yet he does not match the typical nerdy impressions that we have of such people. He is good looking, well built and very strong and tough, winning almost every fight that he finds himself in. He gets involved with numerous sexy women, and just seems to be completely comfortable in his own skin. Plus, he just has a penchant for adventure and excitement, which is, after all, what the movies and stories are all about.
So, yes, Indiana Jones is indeed a hero that we can believe in. A highly educated man who goes looking for not only adventure, but treasures - as well as answers to some of the most perplexing mysteries known to humanity. Yet, what he finds, to paraphrase the words of the character of Jones himself, belongs in a museum. He is not merely looting the priceless stuff, and you get the sense that these historical artifacts could not be in better hands.
I began to look for more stuff of Indiana Jones. Things like the old television series, "The Young Indiana Jones". When I was a kid, that series aired, and for whatever the reason, I did not like it so much, and simply did not follow it. Perhaps I had been expecting something a bit more like the movies, I don't know. But perhaps I have reached an age where I can appreciate it better now.
Lately, all these years later, my craving for more Indian Jones stuff began to grow yet again. I looked into something new, and the focus began to be on books.
I had read the Crystal Skull book after the movie release, in hopes of understanding it better, and gaining a newfound appreciation for it. I had read the book for the last Star Wars movie, Revenge of the Sith, before it came out, and I think it actually enhanced the movie going experience for me. Of course, by then, I had already seen the new Indiana Jones movie, but had felt myself perhaps wanting more, somehow. It worked somewhat, helped me to understand it a bit better. But again, the movie just was not as exciting, as vibrant, perhaps as sexy, as those earlier movies.
So, I began to explore more books, specifically. Until recently, however, I had just kept looking at the books for sale on Ebay, and had not actually committed to purchase - until late last month, when i got a package of fifteen books of Indiana Jones.
It took a while to get to me, but I was excited when it finally did. I opened the box up, feeling almost like a kid. Here were new Indiana Jones adventures, indeed! Some of the covers even looked like they could pass for movie posters! This was exciting!
Finally, I chose one to begin reading, and that was the one that I am reviewing here.
In many ways, it is your standard Indiana Jones adventure. It would not have been out of place in the movie theaters back in the eighties, starring Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones. There are parts that might have seemed a bit....well, strange. Different. But on so many other levels, this is, indeed, vintage Indiana Jones. It was exactly what I had been longing for.
***Spoiler Alert***
Here, Indiana Jones finds himself in the Shaanxi Province in China just a couple of years or so after the Japanese invasion, looking for a rare buried treasure from the tomb of the emperor Qin. He has another guide, and just like in earlier adventures, the guide is not entirely trustworthy. But Jones finds a way inside of the hidden vault on the side of a mountain, and once again has to tread very carefully, and avoid the numerous booby traps, which includes, of course, water.
He manages to escape this through his wits, but only to get captured by the occupying Japanese. Eventually, he manages to make an exciting escape out from Japanese imprisonment, as well, but then is pursued by them for the rest of this adventure. In the process of his escape, he meets with Faye and her daughter Mystery, who are traveling magicians that happen to be in town. They help Jones to make his escape via merchant marine vessel, but of course it does not end there. The ship is attacked by the Japanese, and the crew find themselves on an isolated island that serves as a leper colony.
Faye tells Jones about her husband, who has mysteriously disappeared, chasing another all powerful find that will, naturally, pique the interest of Indiana Jones, and send him (and us, the readers) on yet another adventure.
Off they go to Iraq.
What is he off to find this time? The Omega Book, a book of such mystery and power that it gives the one who possesses it will be able to control the fate of the world!
They meet the Yezidi tribe, who while not precisely Satan worshipers, nonetheless pay honor and respect to him, in what most of us would feel was a twist. These people hold a secret of their own - the Staff, which is supposed to have some incredible, mystical powers, according to legend.
At first, the stick seems old and brittle and devoid of any real power. But as it so happens, it has some sort of attachment to Faye. She can bring it to life, if you will, again, and it regains volume and strength and freshness while in her possession. Almost by accident, Faye's association with the Staff is found out, and the trio take the Staff with them to Egypt, where they begin to search for the real prize that they are after, the legendary Omega Book.
Once in Egypt, they meet Sallah, the Egyptian archaelogical digger that we first met in two of the three original Indiana Jones movies. With Sallah's help, they go to the site of the Sphinx and the Great Pyramid at night, once the tourists are gone, and with the power of the Staff, led by Faye, they manage to find the long lost secret chamber that houses the legendary Omega Book.
Of course, it will not be easy. It is booby trapped, and surviving all of that takes some doing.
Also, as they are about to find out, they are being followed by their Japanese rivals, who begin to grow bolder themselves, now, as they are so near their prize.
They find the Omega Book, but the book is without real beginning or end. It is real, and made evidently of precious metals, made to be paper thin. Mystery urges Indy not to look up his own name, warning him that the trap of the book is to look up your own name - because then it will tell you that you never got out of that chamber alive. Soon, we find out the truth of this assertion when the arrogant head of the Japanese team demands to know his own fate. But the rest of the Japanese hold the team prisoner, and intend to kill them, essentially.
The power of the Staff, which only Faye can truly utilize, manages to save the day for them. They get out of the secret chamber, and decide to bury it. Indy tells Sallah that the world just is not ready yet for the power of the Omega Book, and it will be found in due time, sometime in the future.
We see Indy return back to the familiar surroundings of Princeton University, right here in New Jersey, where he takes down a jar that seems initially to be filled with liquid and nothing else, but out of which he pulls out....tah-dah!...a Crystal Skull! No, not the Crystal Skull of the later adventure, and the subject of the most recent movie in 2008. But a Crystal Skull nonetheless.
It has cost him someone he loves, already, and so he decides that he needs to go back to British Honduras to return the skull to it's rightful home.
This becomes an adventure itself, as he is confronted by an enormous Anaconda snake intent on eating him. He manages to dodge it, almost by dumb luck as by anything else, and finds a smaller corridor that, luckily, the snake is too big to fit into. He travels until he finds this strange mist, which he is afraid to approach. But not wanting to go back to confront the snake, he then has to take his chances with the mist, and he finds himself transported through time, back to the days of a very ancient civilization about to witness sacrificial rituals that Indy watches, almost as if he were the ghost.
Next, we see a hesitant Indiana Jones reluctantly approaching, and finally meeting, with a famous professor that we can only assume to be Albert Einstein. He asks about the possibility of time travel, and is initially disappointed by the professor's (presumably Einstein) response. But the answers, the professor assures Jones, are within him already, and he does not need anyone else to define his own sanity. Jones nods, understanding that, in fact, he knew this answer already.
The book ends with a rather impressive short essay all about magic. It is a short piece, yet it goes into some detail about all the different kinds of magic, as well as a bit about recent magic. The essay also delves into the specifics of those historical and legendary elements of this story, including the Staff of Moses, which the author, Max McCoy, explains is actually the Staff of Aaron, and it's mysterious powers, as well as the apparent lapse in knowledge about where it came to rest. There is a brief description not about the Omega Book, which the author admits was a product of his own imagination, but about the concept of Omega itself, and finally, about the Sphinx and it's history.
The essay could be passed over by fans just wanting to read an Indiana Jones adventure novel, or it could even be read by itself, as a nice little essay that is tightly packed with all of the history and legends just mentioned. It references books for further exploration by the reader. I would recommend reading it along with the book, as they seem to be good companion pieces for one another.
"Any suffiiciently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
-Arthur C. Clarke
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