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A review by hawaiianbrian
Indiana Jones and the Sky Pirates by Martin Caidin
2.0
While none of these Indiana Jones books have really captured the essence of our beloved adventuring archaeologist, this book was the farthest from the mark. The character ostensibly called "Indy" in here was portrayed as some kind of master intellect, a super spy, and someone who was so cunning that the military deferred to his judgment. Although he was in just about every scene, we were almost never in his POV. Actually, we jumped POVs constantly, spending a great deal of time in the POV of his assistant, Gale, but in the space of a paragraph we might dip into the thoughts of any number of people around Indy. We rarely get his thoughts on anything. Instead, he's this quiet fellow who always seems to be two steps ahead of everyone else, despite protesting that he doesn't know anything, and who is capable of stunning global heads of state into shocked silence by simply asking a single question.
He is surrounded by a group of elite bad-asses who are described as being top in their field – yet they do very little throughout the entire novel. In fact, pretty much nothing set up in the early pages of the book or described on the back cover has any bearing with what actually happens. Indiana Jones *doesn't* travel to various libraries and museums to do research... he just offers what info he already knows. There's a trip to a museum, yes, but that's just to meet with some people in a secret sub-basement room. (There are actually many, many meetings in this book, and Caidin wants you to know just how cloaked in super-secrecy all of them are.) If anyone ever talks about psychokinetic lift as a way of powering the UFO-like aircraft employed by their enemies, I missed it. The book makes it seem like Indy and his team will be battling "Sky Pirates," which are really more like an incredibly secretive organization of pseudo-altruistic power brokers who want to end conflict by... dominating the world, and decided to do so by pretending to be aliens. They only steal at the beginning of the book, and that's to send some kind of a message in their global cat-and-mouse game. No actual piracy involved, folks. That would have been cool! But... no.
The best part of the book is the train heist at the beginning. When I read that, I got all excited, thinking we'd finally have one of these supposedly Indiana Jones novels with some actual action sequences and pulp intrigue. There was another train heist at about the 25% mark, but that involved Indiana Jones and his super team stealing... an artifact he put on the train himself... all to... trick the evil organization (which calls itself E.V.I.L. for some reason). It wasn't really all that clear. Pretty neat scene involving a skyhook and some of Jack Shannon's mob goons, but didn't amount to much. A few smaller action sequences here and there, including one involving a mechanical bear (???) but most of the novel involves lots of discussions, planning, flying here and there for meetings, brooding, an awkward attempt at flirting between Indy and Gale, some hijinks. Other potentially exciting scenes, other than the last sequence, happen "off camera."
In all, not the greatest book in general, and definitely NOT an Indiana Jones book. Probably the most action-packed of this series, but even though we finally get some exciting action, we don't really get Indiana Jones in anything but name. As others have said, this would have been way better as a Sky Captain novel. Then Caidin, who obviously is a nut for flight history and terminology, could have had his main character be an actual pilot. But ah, well.
He is surrounded by a group of elite bad-asses who are described as being top in their field – yet they do very little throughout the entire novel. In fact, pretty much nothing set up in the early pages of the book or described on the back cover has any bearing with what actually happens. Indiana Jones *doesn't* travel to various libraries and museums to do research... he just offers what info he already knows. There's a trip to a museum, yes, but that's just to meet with some people in a secret sub-basement room. (There are actually many, many meetings in this book, and Caidin wants you to know just how cloaked in super-secrecy all of them are.) If anyone ever talks about psychokinetic lift as a way of powering the UFO-like aircraft employed by their enemies, I missed it. The book makes it seem like Indy and his team will be battling "Sky Pirates," which are really more like an incredibly secretive organization of pseudo-altruistic power brokers who want to end conflict by... dominating the world, and decided to do so by pretending to be aliens. They only steal at the beginning of the book, and that's to send some kind of a message in their global cat-and-mouse game. No actual piracy involved, folks. That would have been cool! But... no.
The best part of the book is the train heist at the beginning. When I read that, I got all excited, thinking we'd finally have one of these supposedly Indiana Jones novels with some actual action sequences and pulp intrigue. There was another train heist at about the 25% mark, but that involved Indiana Jones and his super team stealing... an artifact he put on the train himself... all to... trick the evil organization (which calls itself E.V.I.L. for some reason). It wasn't really all that clear. Pretty neat scene involving a skyhook and some of Jack Shannon's mob goons, but didn't amount to much. A few smaller action sequences here and there, including one involving a mechanical bear (???) but most of the novel involves lots of discussions, planning, flying here and there for meetings, brooding, an awkward attempt at flirting between Indy and Gale, some hijinks. Other potentially exciting scenes, other than the last sequence, happen "off camera."
In all, not the greatest book in general, and definitely NOT an Indiana Jones book. Probably the most action-packed of this series, but even though we finally get some exciting action, we don't really get Indiana Jones in anything but name. As others have said, this would have been way better as a Sky Captain novel. Then Caidin, who obviously is a nut for flight history and terminology, could have had his main character be an actual pilot. But ah, well.