Tomes of Shadowstalking

Welcome to the land of shadows, where evil is the greatest power, where nightfall marks the birth of terror, where your very soul is at risk. Join me as I investigate worlds filled with black magic and dark souls and encounter the monsters rule these wicked places.

This review does not represent the opinions of the general public. It reflects my personal thoughts and opinions on the book.

That said, on to the review!

Ragged Island has guarded a secret for nearly three centuries, killing anyone who dares to seek the "treasure" of a pirate, "Red Ned" Ockham. And years ago in 1971 it claimed the life of a young boy who dared to explore the island that belonged to his family. Now, Malin Hatch, the brother of that boy, has returned to his family home in Stormhaven, Maine, determined once and for all to solve the mystery that has killed so many and hurt so many more. Other treasure hunters have come before him and were repulsed by the Water Pit that refused to give up its secrets. Malin comes armed with modern equipment the likes of which the Pit's designer, a seventeenth century architect, couldn't possibly envision. But will even modern science and technology triumph over such a blood-thirsty pit, or will the Water Pit once again take its terrible toll in human life? And even if Malin and his companions can defeat the Water Pit, do they really want the buried treasure when they finally realize what it is?

Now here's a book with a truly explosive plot. The Relic and Reliquary were excellent books in their own way, extrapolating compelling, plausible stories from remote possibilities. In Riptide, however, we have a tale based firmly in history and fact that is so terribly believable that you halfway imagine that the history and fact is the story and this story is a true account. But consider for a moment that this novel does indeed draw from historical fact, and recognize that everything that occurs in the novel could happen in real life and you have a chilling story about how inhuman humans can be. But more than anything else, you will see that there is truth in the statement of "Radix est malorum cupiditas (Greed is the root of all evil)."

As I said, Riptide draws its story from hard, historical facts. For example, there really is an island--albeit off the coast of Nova Scotia, not Maine--where a "Water Pit" has confounded centuries' worth of treasure hunters who sought to plumb its depths. And though there probably wasn't such a pirate named Edward Ockham, there were definitely pirates who raided all across the Seven Seas, some in service to their monarchs and some for their own gain. Now, pirates have never really been my thing--except when they occur in my favored genres of fantasy, sci-fi, and horor--but unsolved and unexplainable mysteries are. So Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, and giant squid like Architeuthis dux are of interest to me, and so is the mysterious pit on Oak Island. So this novel, as you can see, is right up my alley.

Authors Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child first captured my interest with a beast terrifying a New York museum, and held it with a colony of evolving (or devolving, depending on how you look at it) humans that fed on other humans to survive. Now they've done it again with a terrific novel about an unbelievable (yet entirely believable) story that will only whet your appetite for their next thriller!

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