Meg

Rating:
Summary: Summer Reads Don't Get Much Better
Review: Fantastic, frightening, and fast. Read this book at the beach and see if you aren't casting a frequent eye to the waves in search of Alten's "lord and master of the sea." Alten has pulled off a very difficult trick here -- endowing the reader with the same sense of awe, love, and respect that he so obviously feels for the creature that he writes about.The critics have it all wrong when they refer to want of Jonas' character development. Jonas is not the protagonist here, no more than Goldblum is in Lost World. Meg is who counts and she snatches the spotlight and holds it as fast as those unfortunate boats and subs that she happily chomps on during her rampage.Someone else complained of lack of realism. Bulletin: if you want realism, do not pick up books about 60 foot, prehistoric sharks downing helicopters. But if you want action, fast and furious, if you want to perhaps feel meg-teeth sinking into your dream flesh, then you can do no better than this work.

Rating:
Summary: exciting jaws like story.
Review: I always wondered what it would be like if the megalondon still existed and menaced people the way it's decendent the great white did. Well here it is in this book. The opening chapter is probebly the most incredible ever to deal with this sort of story. When in science fiction move or book or palentoloigy book has a tyrannosaurus been mutilated and eaten in such grisly fashion? When have we ever read of a huge tyrant lizard wailing in agony with it's mouth a fountain of blood at the hands of the huge meg the absouloute ruler of the sea. the greatest predator ever to exist on the earth. Then the discovery of a still exicsting meg at the bottom of the mariana trench that surfaces and runs amok in the pacific. This is truly jurassic shark as is stated on the back. True, the humans are not too sharply focused, but the story is full of excitement and thrills, how could people on this weg site throw this book away and claim that it never should have been published. Alten did a great job writing this and I hope that it will be a movie soon. a garunteed summer blockbuster like jaws. If anyone came face to face with meg I'm sure that they would come to understand what the author is telling us here. once again the opening chapter is truly original and unforgettable, Move over T=rex, meg rules.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing - interesting premise, bad delivery
Review: Disappointing. "Jurassic Shark" said the Los Angeles Times, succinctly summing up the plot, the discovery of a prehistoric giant shark in the depths of the Marianas Trench that finds its way to shallower waters to wreak havoc. Two-dimensional characters, most of them unlikable, trite and boring. Showing occasional flashes of promise that kept petering out, it nevertheless captured my attention long enough for me to want to find out what happened in the end. The author is obviously not a scuba diver himself, constantly referring to tanks of "oxygen" and "air" in the same paragraph, which is really annoying. Pity, because the premise is fascinating but the author fails to deliver.

Rating:
Summary: prehistoric peril in the Pacific
Review: I had never heard of this book until I read the reviews of Charles Wilson's Extinct, and I decided to try it. Jonas Taylor spends the better part of his career trying to convince the public that prehistoric megalodons could survive in the warm waters of undersea canyons. When a submersible dive goes awry, he spends the next 7 years in psychotherapy and trying to convince himself that he only imagined seeing a megalodon. But when a friend shows him a picture of what could be a megalodon tooth lodged in the old wreckage of the submersible, Jonas decides to make the dive again. What he discovers on the dive leaves him paradoxically excited that he can finally prove that he is right yet upset that he loses another friend and inadvertantly brings the female to the surface. Everyone, including the media and the U.S. Navy, gets into the act once the megalodon surfaces. The ensuing chase and capture of the megalodon is exciting and will keep you reading, constantly wanting to know who will win out, man or beast. Like any good shark book, Meg is filled with "good guys" and "bad guys", and I can't deny that I felt a certain satisfaction when the meg snacked on the cheating wife. I only wished that the lover and news reporter had met the same fate. Of course, I also never understood why Benchley's great white never got to munch on the mayor of Amity! Unlike many of the reviewers below, I remember that this is science fiction, and what does it matter how big the tooth is, how long the meg is, or how many millions of years ago it lived? It IS fiction, after all. I found the explanation of how megs could survive in the Mariana Trench and how one of them could swim to the top bathed in the warm blood of the dead meg plausible. However, even I had trouble with two points: the meg is able to leap out of the water almost its entire body length (straight up, too--to attack a helicopter) and Jonas (Jonas, not Jonah) pilots the submersible inside the shark and kills it from the inside (maybe all action heroes should conveniently carry eight-inch meg teeth around with them). Yes, I remember that the great white in Jaws 2 also jumped out of the water to attack a helicopter, and I had trouble with that 25 years ago, too. I don't think that Meg will keep readers out of the water like Jaws did (the real shark attacks on the Gulf Coast of Alabama are doing that), but it will give you something to think about. Overall, this was a great read, the excitement building and building until the dramatic climax. Like many of the reviewers below, I will read the sequel and I think Meg would probably make an exciting movie.If you are a fan of shark books, you will like Meg, but then read Extinct; it is better.

Rating:
Summary: such promise!
Review: great idea for a story....the science of the megaladon staying alive in the heated waters in so cool especially the idea of the blood of a dying meg allowing another to swim the cold waters to the surface and go on a killing rampage...the main character is someone who you can really get behind and are proud of when he proves he is right...
the ending gets cheesy.... though the rest of the action in the novel is on par with other thrillers....the end leaves open the possibility for a sequel (which was written), and is cool how the doctor knows what kind of shark it is by its eyes, and it is a baby meg....too cool...haven't read the sequel yet because i've been warned against it, but i may anyway

this is one of those books that should have been turned into a movie and wasn't...take away the fantasy of a mini-sub going into a massive shark's body, and this book was believable and fun...its like jaws with a science background

Rating:
Summary: Read before you go swimming...Great Book! ! !
Review: ...the most dangerous predator in history...is no longer histroy...
Yup, that's right, Steve Alten went above and beyond in creating this masterpiece. It's what I call the new "JAWS" read, only bigger and better.
The action is stunning when the Megalodon appears and the overall plot is gripping and never slow paced.
Trust me, if you like "JAWS", "BEAST", and all the other classic monster books and movies, you'll love MEG!!!

Rating:
Summary: Summer Reads Don't Get Much Better
Review: Fantastic, frightening, and fast. Read this book at the beach and see if you aren't casting a frequent eye to the waves in search of Alten's "lord and master of the sea." Alten has pulled off a very difficult trick here -- endowing the reader with the same sense of awe, love, and respect that he so obviously feels for the creature that he writes about. The critics have it all wrong when they refer to want of Jonas' character development. Jonas is not the protagonist here, no more than Goldblum is in Lost World. Meg is who counts and she snatches the spotlight and holds it as fast as those unfortunate boats and subs that she happily chomps on during her rampage. Someone else complained of lack of realism. Bulletin: if you want realism, do not pick up books about 60 foot, prehistoric sharks downing helicopters. But if you want action, fast and furious, if you want to perhaps feel meg-teeth sinking into your dream flesh, then you can do no better than this work.

Rating:
Summary: Read before you go swimming...Great Book! ! !
Review: ...the most dangerous predator in history...is no longer histroy...
Yup, that's right, Steve Alten went above and beyond in creating this masterpiece. It's what I call the new "JAWS" read, only bigger and better.
The action is stunning when the Megalodon appears and the overall plot is gripping and never slow paced.
Trust me, if you like "JAWS", "BEAST", and all the other classic monster books and movies, you'll love MEG!!!

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing - interesting premise, bad delivery
Review: Disappointing. "Jurassic Shark" said the Los Angeles Times, succinctly summing up the plot, the discovery of a prehistoric giant shark in the depths of the Marianas Trench that finds its way to shallower waters to wreak havoc. Two-dimensional characters, most of them unlikable, trite and boring. Showing occasional flashes of promise that kept petering out, it nevertheless captured my attention long enough for me to want to find out what happened in the end. The author is obviously not a scuba diver himself, constantly referring to tanks of "oxygen" and "air" in the same paragraph, which is really annoying. Pity, because the premise is fascinating but the author fails to deliver.

Rating:
Summary: Great book! A real page turner!!
Review: I read Meg several years ago and found it on my shelf the other day and reread it. I forgot how much I loved that book! I just loaned it to one of my friends and he can't put it down! Its a very exciting novel filled with suspense. Its unlike any book I've ever read!