It’s my turn now for the Vostok Blog Tour, presented by iRead Book Tours and that have kindly supplied an ARC of Vostok in exchange of a honest review (thank you!).
Vostok is the sequel of Steve Alten (a best-seller author of many adventure books)’s The Loch, also presenting the same main character, the biologist Wallace. However, you don’t need to having read it to understand Vostok, and that’s a pleasant surprise – too often this is not the case, and considering how common are book series now this is something you could reasonably fear.
The synopsis tells all you need to know for a good start.
East Antarctica: The coldest, most desolate location on Earth. Two-and-a-half miles below the ice cap is Vostok, a six thousand square mile liquid lake, over a thousand feet deep, left untouched for more than 15 million years. Now, marine biologist Zachary Wallace and two other scientists aboard a submersible tethered to a laser will journey 13,000 feet beneath the ice into this unexplored realm to discover Mesozoic life forms long believed extinct – and an object of immense power responsible for the evolution of modern man.
In this sequel to The Loch and prequel to the upcoming MEG 5: Nightstalkers, New York Times best-selling author Steve Alten offers readers a crossover novel that combines characters from two of his most popular series.
There are many things I liked here, first of all the setting (the reality of Lake Vostok is indeed stranger than fiction. See below), the detailed description of the Antarctica’s base camp and more in the general the whole first part of the book. The breathtaking and gripping pages of the descent of the submarine into the subterranean basin and the discovery of primitive life forms did work well for me.
(CREDIT: US SCIENCE FOUNDATION)
Problems started with the second part of the book, which doesn’t really seem connected with the rest, and that steers the story in a direction completely different you would expect. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing per se: it’s just that in the present case it disorients readers, when not scaring them away or even put them off when they don’t like this new direction.
And here lies the main issue I found in Vostok: there are two different novels here, not one. And the second has nothing to do with a science adventure in Antarctica, and it’s of the conspiracy theories, Dan Brown-UFO kind of stories. I have nothing against them, and to tell to truth in a few good pages Vostok has even reminded me of The Illuminatus! Trilogy by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson, a book that I do love and that all fans of the genre *must* read. But good or bad it might be, it has no place here: as simple as that. I believe the author should have kept the two separated, maybe even writing two books instead of one. This is what left me a bit disappointed, and I had to confess that I struggled to finish it. It is a pity, for it looks like a lost opportunity.
Now for the details of the book – which is available both in print and PDF, you can find them here:
Book Title: Vostok by Steve Alten
Category: Adult Fiction, 416 pages
Genre: Science fiction thriller
Publisher: Rebel Press
Published: February 17, 2015
Will send print books to: USA and Canada
Will send ebooks: International
Tour dates: March 16 to April 10, 2015
Content Rating: PG
Incidentally, it you want to know more about the amazing Vostok (the lake), you may want to watch this BBC Horizon Documentary, The Lost World of Lake Vostok. You will find out that the book’s scientific sections about the Lake, its incredible environment and even the life conditions are accurate, and that, in my opinion, represent one of the most valuable parts of Vostok, which I still recommend for a reading.
For the whole Vostok blog tour, please see Steven Alten’s page on iBook Read Tour with all hosting blogs and dates.
Yes, I felt completely the same way: this was two distinct stories, and I found it an odd sort of cobbling together of events. However, I think it worked better for me than it did for you. I LOVED the first half, when they are in Lake Vostok, but I also enjoyed the UFO/alien part, as different as it was.
Hello Tammy, thanks. And don’t get me wrong, I’ve liked it too. It is just that we come to aliens (and UFO) I might be a bit picky… 🙂