Rating: 
Summary: Throw it back!
Review: I've just been reading some of the reader comments (and, Lord, I wish I'd read them BEFORE I bought the book), and many reviewers who rated the book highly tell the rest of us: "lighten up, it's just a summer read." True. But, speaking for myself, that's why I'm so angry at the author--and at Doubleday, for killing the trees to make this book--he can't even meet my minimum requirements for a summer read: an interesting premise, sympathetic characters, a plausible plot, and dialogue that doesn't induce nausea, sleep, or hysterical laughter. Ok, so I wasn't expecting an enduring literary classic, but COME ON! The premise is pretty good...I'm willing to suspend disbelief. But the character development is nonexistent, the plot is laughable, and my cat could write better dialogue. Worst of all, the book was filled with scientific errors so glaring that even I could spot them--and the closest I've ever gotten to deep sea diving is admiring the bathysphere at the Coney Island aquarium. The writer swears he did extensive research for this book! In what bar? He could have eliminated half his errors if he'd only watched Shark Week on the Discovery Channel.
Rating: 
Summary: Repeatious, sensational, no depth in characters really...
Review: I enjoyed reading most of the book...I read it in a day or two. I'm not a writer, editor, or a critic, but it seems that Alton was either writing "down" to his readers or he wrote the book in pieces and forgot that he'd already shared the same information 3 or 4 times earlier in the book. We aren't stupid! I guess it seemed that he might have been shooting for a certain number of pages and so he had to fill the pages up with repeated statistics and charaters one liners that required no thought, only fowl language. Real character development is not formed in that way. I think it was good for a first book. Better then I'd do that's for sure, but this is a world market....not to deep, but if you aren't looking for deep it's great :-)
Rating:
Summary: Even for a summer read, this "book" is a travesty
Review: Reading this book is a waste of money, time, ocular function, and paper. Everything from the character development to the plot is pure nonsense. Just when you think it can't get any worse, our hero is cutting his way through the stomach and heart wall of the beast with an old shark's tooth. Further words cannot describe how bad this book is. The bar that signifies the worst book ever written has definitely been risen. We should encourage Congress to pass legislation that would prohibit Steve Alten from writing anything ever again.
Rating:
Summary: Seedy devices, lousy book
Review: This book isn't interesting, its only virtue is that it's a very quick read. The story is completely implausable, and there are a huge number of factual errors. The characters aren't very interesting, and the Meg isn't very scary. My main reason for rating it one star instead of two is the cheap marketing tactic used on the back cover--the part about the book being the summer's best read (I don't have the book in front of me at the moment) is in the same color and font as the quote just below, making it appear to be part of the quote. The reviews must have been truly horrible to merit such a tactic--"'Two words--jurassic shark'" is not a good review, especially if the publisher couldn't find anything better written about the book in that review.
Rating:
Summary: SO YOU WANT TO BE A WRITER
Review: This book is great encouragement for anyone who wants to be a published author but lacks a collection of past work, the ability to write convincing dialogue, and the stamina to collect and weed through the thousands of pages of research needed to write a convincing science thriller. The best part about this book? Any unpublished writer with talent will see this book as encouragement to get past the fear that prevents them from starting their own novel. If this book can sell, why can't yours? The worst parts of this novel in my opinion were the times when Alten's characters laughed hysterically at jokes that left me thinking "I guess you had to be there".
Rating:
Summary: Meg is a fun, albeit trashy, read.
Review: If you're looking for a guilty pleasure, there are worse ones than Meg. Its premise is interesting, and it moves along at a fairly rapid pace. The novel's strong point is the vividly realized gigantic shark. It has plenty of weak points, including far too many lines that end in exclamations, together with some dialogue and action that can only be described as ridiculous. But if you're buying a book subtitled "A Novel of Deep Terror," you should know you're not getting War and Peace. This isn't one to buy in hardcover, but it's worth a few hours of your time.
Rating: 
Summary: Best read in months
Review: This book was wonderful. I loved every moment of it. I did not dwelve into boring detail and kept the action flowing. A great first book.
Rating:
Summary: Biased by my Marine Bio background, but this was laughable.
Review: One word: Laughable. Perhaps my bias as a graduate student in Marine Biology has something to do with it, but I was laughing so hard at times that it felt like I was reading a comedy. The writing style didn't draw me in at all, and in comparison to other writers, seemed uninspiring. But this isn't what I was laughing at. Here are some examples: 1) No Hydrothermal vents in the Mariana Trench. Even if there were, they do _not_ create a warm layer of tropical water beneath the arctic water above. If you heat water, it gets less dense, it rises and mixes with the water above. The heat input of hydrothermal vents would not be enough to offset the amount of cold water above it. 2) The idea that the sharks would have been driven that deep in the first place is ludicrous. Assuming biology similar to Great Whites (a pretty safe assumption), they would be able to range from arctic waters to tropical. Even during the ice age, the equator wasn't _that_ cold, so the sharks could have gone there even if their biology was different. 3) The scene where the female chews up the male, leaving a stream of superheated blood that she could climb up within through the arctic water. What's wrong with this? Where do I start... Sharks even that size wouldn't have that much blood. Blood cools quickly in ice cold water, even the amount that was lost all at once. I was simply rolling. I would like to end this by saying that if anyone did enjoy this novel, I'm glad you did, but please don't take the science in it at face value. I heard from a reliable source that one of the premiere shark experts in the world gave advice to the author, and after reading the book asked to be stricken from the credits so that his reputation wouldn't suffer.
Rating:
Summary: You may like MEG if...
Review: If you were dropped on your head as a baby, you may like MEG. If you rode to school on the "little bus", MEG is for you! If you just learned to read, and this is your first book, you'll probably think it's great! Otherwise, this poorly written, dull, insultingly insipid tree waster might not please you. This is the probably the worst book I've ever actually finished.
Rating:
Summary: This Book is AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Review: This book is one of the best fiction novels I have read since the Star Wars series!!! For a first time writer Alten has done a masterful job of bringing suspense and terror together in an exciting story. I am fan of Megalodons and want to study more about them, and this book has pushed me farther in that direction. Whoever would give this book less than four stars does not know how enjoy good suspense, and reading. A great job for his first book, I hope to see more. Thank you Mr. Alten!!!
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