The Meg
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The Meg
Narrated by:
Sean Runnette
Buy Now for £12.99
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Narrated by:
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Sean Runnette
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By:
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Steve Alten
About this listen
On a top-secret dive into the Pacific Ocean's deepest canyon, Jonas Taylor found himself face to face with the largest and most ferocious predator in the history of the animal kingdom. The sole survivor of the mission, Taylor is haunted by what he's sure he saw but still can't prove exists - Carcharodon megalodon, the massive mother of the great white shark.
Written off as a crackpot suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, Taylor refuses to forget the depths that nearly cost him his life. But it takes an old friend in need to get him to return to the water and a hotshot female submarine pilot to dare him back into a high-tech miniature sub.
Diving deeper than he ever has before, Taylor will face terror like he's never imagined, and what he finds could turn the tides bloody red until the end of time. MEG is about to surface. When she does, nothing and no one is going to be safe, and Jonas must face his greatest fear once again.
©2011 Steve Alten (P)2011 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror was published way back in 1997 and its author Steve Alton has managed to challenge both Nightmare on Elm Street as well as Friday the 13th with the amount of sequels he's squeezed out of this idea over the last twenty years.
Like most adaptations the film wanders pretty far from the plot of the book, taking many elements and doing its own thing with them in a kind of patch-work "best of". People who read a lot will know what I mean here; it's common for film adaptations to repurpose a dozen or so key moments from a book and basically write its own story around them; and this is pretty much the approach the film makers took with Meg.
This isn't meant in any way as an insult to them; personally I think they did a good job with their adaptation; obviously, else I wouldn't have bothered reading the book at all, but this does mean that book and film are VERY different beasts; and the Meg they both contain are very different beasts too.
Firstly though, if you thought the movie was cliché riddled then its probably best you avoid the book entirely as there's probably more cliché's per-square-inch than anything I've ever read. We have the man-who-sees-a-monster-and-who-isn’t-believed, who also happens to be the-jaded-gunslinger-who-reluctantly-straps-on-his-six-guns; we have the social-climbing-wife-who-doesn’t-understand-her-husband and the dodgy-lawyer-who-she-has-an-affair-with. There’s also the sexy-lady-scientist-who-hates-the-hero who predictably eventually sees that he’s-a-man-of-honor-and-falls-for-him. Not to mention the cigar-chomping-rogue-pilot and - of course - the huge-flesh-eating-dinosaur we all came to see.
Of course most of this is what the reader had come to see anyway. Generally speaking people who want to read about a giant prehistoric shark that eats people isn't on the lookout for high art; its questionable whether we're on the look out of any kind of art at all; so even though any criticisms concerning any of this would probably be fairly accurate they'd also be a bit beside the point.
You don't judge a Da Vinci by the standards you’d apply to a copy of Archie.
Not that I'm saying Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror is comparative to a Da Vinci, or a copy of Archie for that matter, just that, well... let’s not judge it by unobtainable standards shall we?
Based on this book, the only one I've read from him, Steve Alton isn't much of a writer. He writes cliché's and his dialogue seems rooted in the westerns of the 50's. There’s a tendency to write females based almost solely on their physical appearance and the men all tend to be only half a step up from Neanderthals. Based on these criteria Meg doesn't do all that well, but there are elements on which Meg, and Steve Alton, does shine.
Steve has a good imagination and knows what a pulp horror fan is after. He's also good with atmosphere and plots his book in a no-nonsense way that side-steps art in favor of sheer expedience.
There’s a lot to be said for this.
It seems to me that Steve Alton has aimed his books at those of us who grew up with the horror of the late seventies and early eighties. Horror then was much more home-spun in its approach and its main emphasis was on its basic effects rather than on any pretentions of "art". Personally I consider "art" to be almost, very nearly, a bad word. I'd prefer entertainment over art any day of the week; and I'd prefer imaginative failure to artistic excellence any moment of any of those days as well.
Based on these criteria Steve Alton does extremely well and I have little doubt that in the twenty years since the release of Meg he's polished his skill somewhat, and I'm sure to know if this is true or not because I'm certainly reading more from the man.
Over on the website Goodreads they do a challenge each year, and this year I set myself thirty books to read - Meg being one of them; and though I've read quite a few that I would consider much better books, better written at least, there have been very few I have enjoyed as much.
Ultimately this is the only thing that really matters.
Before I go I've got to mention what I saw as the biggest difference between the book and the film. Whereas Meg The Movie is a straight up story of man versus beast the book is a lot more nuanced in its approach, there a lot of effort NOT to kill the megalodon in the book. In fact if they wanted to do that the book would've been over in half the time. Perhaps taking his cues from Jurassic Park Steve Alton doesn't seem to just want write a monster, as there’s a lot of emphasis on the megalodon as a character in the book; and this - in my case at least - successfully muddied the waters on how I saw the beast. Halfway through the book many of the main characters views regarding the huge animal also change, leading to a conclusion very unlike the movie that was made from it.
When I watched it theatrically I enjoyed the film quite a bit, I realize that it’s a piece of digital cliché riddled nonsense but I thought it was a likable piece of digital cliché riddled nonsense. It made me think of the films I watched as a kid and it because a piece of comfort food because of it.
The book had a very similar effect.
Okay people, don't get eaten and if you brave either the book or the film please don't chew me out if you hate them either.
Remember that those of us who maintian low standards are rarely disappointed!
A Fun - Though Flawed - Adventure
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