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Extinct
Charles Wilson has received the highest praise from authors such as John Grisham and from reviewers, including being termed "Wizard Plotter" by the Los Angeles Times. Now, he has created his most chilling story yet-- a fast-paced thriller so realistic it will take your breath away and keep you riveted to the page.
From the Gulf of Mexico's warm shallow waters...to the deepest parts of the Pacific...terror comes to the surface...
Six-year-old Paul Haines watches as two older boys dive into a coastal river...and don't come up. His mother, Carolyn, a charter boat captain on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, finds herself embroiled in the tragedy to an extent she could never have imagined.
Carolyn joins the marine biologist Alan Freeman in the hunt for a creature that is terrorizing the waters along the Gulf Coast. But neither of them could have envisioned exactly what kind of danger they are facing.
Yet one man, Admiral Vandiver, does know what this creature is, and how it has come into the shallows. And his secret obsession with it will force him, as well as Paul, Carolyn and Alan, into a race against time...and a race toward death.
From the Gulf of Mexico's warm shallow waters...to the deepest parts of the Pacific...terror comes to the surface...
Six-year-old Paul Haines watches as two older boys dive into a coastal river...and don't come up. His mother, Carolyn, a charter boat captain on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, finds herself embroiled in the tragedy to an extent she could never have imagined.
Carolyn joins the marine biologist Alan Freeman in the hunt for a creature that is terrorizing the waters along the Gulf Coast. But neither of them could have envisioned exactly what kind of danger they are facing.
Yet one man, Admiral Vandiver, does know what this creature is, and how it has come into the shallows. And his secret obsession with it will force him, as well as Paul, Carolyn and Alan, into a race against time...and a race toward death.
310 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published May 15, 1997
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 56 reviews
September 21, 2014
This book has a shark on its cover. So it's not a spoiler to say that it's about sharks, right? I'm not sure where I picked it up; I think possibly a sale at my library. I love animals and I love books about animals killing people (is that odd? whatever), so this was right up my alley. I finished it in a few hours on a plane trip.
I think the comparisons to Michael Crichton need to stop. Anytime I've read a book that has the author described as the "next Crichton" or whatever nonsense, it never pans out. Just stop trying to be what you're not!
This book? Nothing like Crichton. The writing was simple - which can be a good thing, but in this case, it wasn't. It was science-light. How the story developed was silly. For example Also, everything just seemed to fall into place too conveniently. Some of the getaway scenes didn't make sense to me. I feel like there could have been a lot done with the basic story of but this book completely missed that opportunity.
I give it 2.5 stars for keeping me vaguely entertained for a few hours on a long, boring plane trip.
I think the comparisons to Michael Crichton need to stop. Anytime I've read a book that has the author described as the "next Crichton" or whatever nonsense, it never pans out. Just stop trying to be what you're not!
This book? Nothing like Crichton. The writing was simple - which can be a good thing, but in this case, it wasn't. It was science-light. How the story developed was silly. For example Also, everything just seemed to fall into place too conveniently. Some of the getaway scenes didn't make sense to me. I feel like there could have been a lot done with the basic story of but this book completely missed that opportunity.
I give it 2.5 stars for keeping me vaguely entertained for a few hours on a long, boring plane trip.
October 25, 2016
I loved this one. I’m a huge fan of horror and especially ones featuring monsters of the deep.
The author gives us the Megalodon, a giant prehistoric cousin of the Great White shark. I watch Shark Week and tons of documentaries about sharks. This isn’t a made up creature. It really existed a long time ago. Some believe it still does, deep in the Marianas Trench, the deepest part of the ocean. I may be skeptical about that as subs have visited the bottom and come up with no evidence. But, you never know, and that makes for some good fiction.
This is horror so I knew better than to get attached to the characters, but I couldn’t help myself. They were so genuine, and even the ones with small cameos had a lasting impact.
As for the monster of the deep. It’s huge, it’s hungry, and it’s almost supernaturally cunning.
One scene where the meg periscopes to pick off it’s victim from a beaver dam was horrifying. The author’s writing put me there, a witness to the carnage.
The suspense was intense. My mind kept jumping ahead, thinking about what might happen to who and where the beast would strike next. What made it feel real was that the author didn’t always let the shark get its intended victim. And sometimes, when you anticipated the creatures attack, it didn’t come. At least not when and where you thought it would.
Great writing, a terrifying plot, and genuine characters had me rubbing my hands together in fiendish glee.
A quick note. I never found a movie based upon this book, as is mentioned on the cover. With today’s CG and technology, what a terrifying movie it could be.
The author gives us the Megalodon, a giant prehistoric cousin of the Great White shark. I watch Shark Week and tons of documentaries about sharks. This isn’t a made up creature. It really existed a long time ago. Some believe it still does, deep in the Marianas Trench, the deepest part of the ocean. I may be skeptical about that as subs have visited the bottom and come up with no evidence. But, you never know, and that makes for some good fiction.
This is horror so I knew better than to get attached to the characters, but I couldn’t help myself. They were so genuine, and even the ones with small cameos had a lasting impact.
As for the monster of the deep. It’s huge, it’s hungry, and it’s almost supernaturally cunning.
One scene where the meg periscopes to pick off it’s victim from a beaver dam was horrifying. The author’s writing put me there, a witness to the carnage.
The suspense was intense. My mind kept jumping ahead, thinking about what might happen to who and where the beast would strike next. What made it feel real was that the author didn’t always let the shark get its intended victim. And sometimes, when you anticipated the creatures attack, it didn’t come. At least not when and where you thought it would.
Great writing, a terrifying plot, and genuine characters had me rubbing my hands together in fiendish glee.
A quick note. I never found a movie based upon this book, as is mentioned on the cover. With today’s CG and technology, what a terrifying movie it could be.
July 7, 2022
The opening didn't quite ground me well in the story but after I got past that the tale picked up and it moved along quickly. Characters were interesting. The ending upped the tension a lot and kept me reading. Overall, I enjoyed it quite a bit. Much better, in my opinion, than the better known Megalodon tale called "Meg."
April 28, 2014
This book was a serious letdown. I was told that it was different from other books in the “giant shark killing people” genre. But it’s not. It is exactly the same as every other book on the subject out there, but with even more confusion and irritation.
Let me start off with a bit of a rant. I NEVER EVER EEEEVVVVVEEERR want to see any of the following in a monster megalodon shark killing people book/movie again:
Read the rest of this review at Written Among the Stars
Let me start off with a bit of a rant. I NEVER EVER EEEEVVVVVEEERR want to see any of the following in a monster megalodon shark killing people book/movie again:
Read the rest of this review at Written Among the Stars
May 28, 2008
Extinct should have stayed that way.
This is not a good book. The prose is awkward and wordy, the characters shallow, undeveloped and uninteresting, the plot conventional and dull, the action tedious and overdrawn.
The book takes place in Mississippi, around the Delta region, and begins with two boys getting eaten by a prehistoric shark. It even has the obligatory family dog barking furiously on the river shore.
A few other minor characters appear, whose sole purpose is to get eaten by the shark. A local marine biologist and babe charter boat captain, along with her father and the local sheriff, soon realize what they think is a great white shark has entered the river from the Gulf of Mexico. Meanwhile, the Director of Naval Intelligence happens to believe that megalodons, huge prehistoric sharks long thought to be extinct, still exist. It's a hobby of his. That's his reason for being involved in the story. It's a hobby.
The book meanders along its predictable way. The babe captain's father takes the local junior high boxing team camping and fishing on the river, and are attacked by the megalodon. The marine biologist and babe captain save them. The county coroner determines from the bite marks on a body part that the poor digested soul was eaten by a big shark. Charter captains crowd the river with raw meat and other bait to lure the shark and kill it. Ho-hum, nothing new.
All this could be forgiven if the book were well-written. It isn't. It's verbose, riddled with detail, leaving out nothing. Every scene tells us where every character is what every character does. It's pointless and slows down the action.
Some sentences are just painful, like this one: "The craft leaned on its side toward the small aluminum boat, floating partially submerged and nearly hidden from sight in a stand of tall water grass growing in the shadows of a line of tall oaks leaning out over the river." I count six prepositional phrases in that clunker, about five too many.
The characters seemingly have no independent goals or aspirations. They simply go along with the flow, doing the predictable, just anonymous cogs in this grinding plot. They change in no significant way, except that (surprise!) the marine biologist and babe charter captain get engaged.
More annoyances. In the first third of the book, the babe charter captain's dad was Mr. Herald. That's how the author referred to him. Then, on the camping trip, Mr. Herald suddenly became Fred. I had to page backward toward the beginning to find out that Fred was indeed Mr. Herald. One boy on the campout didn't even warrant a name. He was the "younger blond brother" or "young blond boy."
Extinct deserves to join its prehistoric ancestors and disappear.
This is not a good book. The prose is awkward and wordy, the characters shallow, undeveloped and uninteresting, the plot conventional and dull, the action tedious and overdrawn.
The book takes place in Mississippi, around the Delta region, and begins with two boys getting eaten by a prehistoric shark. It even has the obligatory family dog barking furiously on the river shore.
A few other minor characters appear, whose sole purpose is to get eaten by the shark. A local marine biologist and babe charter boat captain, along with her father and the local sheriff, soon realize what they think is a great white shark has entered the river from the Gulf of Mexico. Meanwhile, the Director of Naval Intelligence happens to believe that megalodons, huge prehistoric sharks long thought to be extinct, still exist. It's a hobby of his. That's his reason for being involved in the story. It's a hobby.
The book meanders along its predictable way. The babe captain's father takes the local junior high boxing team camping and fishing on the river, and are attacked by the megalodon. The marine biologist and babe captain save them. The county coroner determines from the bite marks on a body part that the poor digested soul was eaten by a big shark. Charter captains crowd the river with raw meat and other bait to lure the shark and kill it. Ho-hum, nothing new.
All this could be forgiven if the book were well-written. It isn't. It's verbose, riddled with detail, leaving out nothing. Every scene tells us where every character is what every character does. It's pointless and slows down the action.
Some sentences are just painful, like this one: "The craft leaned on its side toward the small aluminum boat, floating partially submerged and nearly hidden from sight in a stand of tall water grass growing in the shadows of a line of tall oaks leaning out over the river." I count six prepositional phrases in that clunker, about five too many.
The characters seemingly have no independent goals or aspirations. They simply go along with the flow, doing the predictable, just anonymous cogs in this grinding plot. They change in no significant way, except that (surprise!) the marine biologist and babe charter captain get engaged.
More annoyances. In the first third of the book, the babe charter captain's dad was Mr. Herald. That's how the author referred to him. Then, on the camping trip, Mr. Herald suddenly became Fred. I had to page backward toward the beginning to find out that Fred was indeed Mr. Herald. One boy on the campout didn't even warrant a name. He was the "younger blond brother" or "young blond boy."
Extinct deserves to join its prehistoric ancestors and disappear.
January 8, 2013
Wow! As a huge fan of shark stories, this title naturally caught my eye. And though this didn’t replace my favorite shark titles, it certainly joined them a bit. It was a lot of fun to read. And all in all, this was a pretty entertaining book - similar, of course, to Steve Alten's Meg series. Despite the anatomically strange cover, the book felt very well researched. And it was certainly entertaining, and exciting. And the book included references to all four of the Jaws films, for a little bit of added fun! With fast pacing and characters who are just complex enough for the genre, this made for a very fun read.
June 15, 2020
Fantastic!
March 12, 2015
Well... It's not a "bad" book. That right there is totally damning with faint praise, as it should be. This novel came out in 1997, the same year as Steve Alten's "MEG: A Novel of Deep Terror" - I guess apparently this was the year American wanted, nay, DEMANDED, giant killer shark fiction.
Alten's "MEG" was so, so ridiculous. Examples of this ridiculousness include a flashback to prehistory where a Megalodon attacked a Tyrannosaurus rex, despite the fact that Megalodon missed T. rex by tens of millions of years, the current Megalodon destroying the USS Nautilus, and the denouement of the story had the ghostly white giant shark wiping out a ragtag flotilla of boats and helicopters. And despite being written at a sixth-grade reading level, I enjoyed it because of the ridiculousness. Why not have the hero's sidekick be a scruffy, Jimmy Buffet-esque ex-Navy drunkard or have the hero hook up with the hot Asian daughter of the business tycoon who wants to build a whale sanctuary or Have him cut out the heart of the sixty-foot fish after being swallowed whole? Steve Alten basically said "You know, what? Fuck it. It's my fictional world and I'll do what I want dammit".
I've spent a paragraph, a long paragraph talking about a different book - that's because this one, just, meh. The settings of MEG included Hawaii, the Pacific Ocean, San Francisco. This one takes place off of Biloxi, Mississippi - possibly the most boring damn place you could set an ocean yarn. There are things that could make a Gulf of Mexico giant killer shark tale interesting - especially when one of the sharks is 200-feet-long. Oil rigs? Sea planes? Cruise ships? Instead we get canoes, 20-foot Boston Whalers, and cabin cruisers. And oh, the sharks. There's 4 of them, and they do things that sharks cannot do - that no shark has ever done, including some form of echolocation, remaining perfectly still (not known amongst pelagic sharks which Megalodon was), and schooling as family. And one shark is by all accounts killed, and then just magically gets better.
The protagonist (Alan something) is a marine biologist but virtually none of his marine biology skills come into play and in fact he FORGETS to do something no marine biologist (when faced with the extraordinary situation he had just been through) would do. Characters are introduced and then forgotten and then brought back as an afterthought - but if you thought they were brought back to die, oh no. The body count, I think by the end of the story is 10, and almost everyone you know some back story on lives. At one point, there was some foreshadowing that clearly indicated by the rules of fiction that the character must die... and he doesn't. I don't necessarily need a bloodbath to enjoy a giant killer shark story, but if there are four giant killer sharks swimming about and virtually EVERYONE is in the water, the body count would be higher - especially if one is 200 feet long. At one point, one of the sharks is defeated by Boy Scouts.
And the Ahab figure, of which all giant killer shark fiction must have, doesn't even get his comeuppance, just a sad moment when he realizes someone else WHO HE DIDN'T EVEN KNOW died in his pursuit of the shark. Ahab must always die, or at least suffer - losing a leg, eye, what-have-you.
I haven't read any of the other works of Charles Wilson, and quite frankly, "Extinct" doesn't make me want to rush out and check his other works. I get that he was trying to create a more realistic scenario for the story, but the realism didn't work, and in fact, worked against the story because it made it less believable. If I'm going to accept a giant killer shark, you can stretch credulity a little further.
Two stars - it's not terrible, but it just doesn't seem to serve a purpose.
Alten's "MEG" was so, so ridiculous. Examples of this ridiculousness include a flashback to prehistory where a Megalodon attacked a Tyrannosaurus rex, despite the fact that Megalodon missed T. rex by tens of millions of years, the current Megalodon destroying the USS Nautilus, and the denouement of the story had the ghostly white giant shark wiping out a ragtag flotilla of boats and helicopters. And despite being written at a sixth-grade reading level, I enjoyed it because of the ridiculousness. Why not have the hero's sidekick be a scruffy, Jimmy Buffet-esque ex-Navy drunkard or have the hero hook up with the hot Asian daughter of the business tycoon who wants to build a whale sanctuary or Have him cut out the heart of the sixty-foot fish after being swallowed whole? Steve Alten basically said "You know, what? Fuck it. It's my fictional world and I'll do what I want dammit".
I've spent a paragraph, a long paragraph talking about a different book - that's because this one, just, meh. The settings of MEG included Hawaii, the Pacific Ocean, San Francisco. This one takes place off of Biloxi, Mississippi - possibly the most boring damn place you could set an ocean yarn. There are things that could make a Gulf of Mexico giant killer shark tale interesting - especially when one of the sharks is 200-feet-long. Oil rigs? Sea planes? Cruise ships? Instead we get canoes, 20-foot Boston Whalers, and cabin cruisers. And oh, the sharks. There's 4 of them, and they do things that sharks cannot do - that no shark has ever done, including some form of echolocation, remaining perfectly still (not known amongst pelagic sharks which Megalodon was), and schooling as family. And one shark is by all accounts killed, and then just magically gets better.
The protagonist (Alan something) is a marine biologist but virtually none of his marine biology skills come into play and in fact he FORGETS to do something no marine biologist (when faced with the extraordinary situation he had just been through) would do. Characters are introduced and then forgotten and then brought back as an afterthought - but if you thought they were brought back to die, oh no. The body count, I think by the end of the story is 10, and almost everyone you know some back story on lives. At one point, there was some foreshadowing that clearly indicated by the rules of fiction that the character must die... and he doesn't. I don't necessarily need a bloodbath to enjoy a giant killer shark story, but if there are four giant killer sharks swimming about and virtually EVERYONE is in the water, the body count would be higher - especially if one is 200 feet long. At one point, one of the sharks is defeated by Boy Scouts.
And the Ahab figure, of which all giant killer shark fiction must have, doesn't even get his comeuppance, just a sad moment when he realizes someone else WHO HE DIDN'T EVEN KNOW died in his pursuit of the shark. Ahab must always die, or at least suffer - losing a leg, eye, what-have-you.
I haven't read any of the other works of Charles Wilson, and quite frankly, "Extinct" doesn't make me want to rush out and check his other works. I get that he was trying to create a more realistic scenario for the story, but the realism didn't work, and in fact, worked against the story because it made it less believable. If I'm going to accept a giant killer shark, you can stretch credulity a little further.
Two stars - it's not terrible, but it just doesn't seem to serve a purpose.
July 22, 2019
What should you put into your shark novel? Well, sharks, for one thing. Wilson accomplishes that, giving us a 25-foot Great White prehistoric shark that somehow finds itself in the Mississippi River basin and causes havoc.
Another thing? Shark attacks. They don't have to be described in detail, but something needs to happen. Here, they're fairly weak, with people simply being pulled under and never resurfacing or broken surfboards being seen drifting in the water.
You need a good hero. Here, you have a couple: Alan, who works with a fisheries biologist, and Carolyn, a boat captain. They get into a lazily written romance that becomes a strange subplot. You also have a Naval officer, Vandiver, and his nephew Douglas, who are tracking the shark. There are a lot of people in this shark novel, but they don't really do much at times. The writing is very choppy. The author makes sure that we know that Alan did this, then Carolyn responded, and then Douglas said something to Vandiver while eating lunch. It's rather pedestrian compared to, say, Benchley's "Jaws".
You also need an exciting climax. And you get one: the shark is being chased through the river delta by Carolyn, and it destroys a Coast Guard whaler in the process. But the book doesn't really end with a bang, more like a whimper.
If you're looking for a fun summer read, you could get this. Or you could read Steve Alten's breakneck-paced Meg series, which are all great beach reads.
Another thing? Shark attacks. They don't have to be described in detail, but something needs to happen. Here, they're fairly weak, with people simply being pulled under and never resurfacing or broken surfboards being seen drifting in the water.
You need a good hero. Here, you have a couple: Alan, who works with a fisheries biologist, and Carolyn, a boat captain. They get into a lazily written romance that becomes a strange subplot. You also have a Naval officer, Vandiver, and his nephew Douglas, who are tracking the shark. There are a lot of people in this shark novel, but they don't really do much at times. The writing is very choppy. The author makes sure that we know that Alan did this, then Carolyn responded, and then Douglas said something to Vandiver while eating lunch. It's rather pedestrian compared to, say, Benchley's "Jaws".
You also need an exciting climax. And you get one: the shark is being chased through the river delta by Carolyn, and it destroys a Coast Guard whaler in the process. But the book doesn't really end with a bang, more like a whimper.
If you're looking for a fun summer read, you could get this. Or you could read Steve Alten's breakneck-paced Meg series, which are all great beach reads.
October 29, 2012
This was a fun read, but I did not like it nearly as much as the Meg series. (I did laugh that there was a character named Jonas in here, though)
I think this book was just too short; they don't even find out what the creature is until the end of the book, and then it just ends with no real resolution.
Since I'm a huge nerd, though, I did absolutely love the rebuttals about other species that have appeared again after being thought extinct for years. (Megamouth, coelacanth, etc.) I think it's a bit presumptuous for scientists to 100% say that something doesn't exist in the ocean anymore just because we haven't seen it in awhile. The ocean is a mighty big place, and we haven't even begun to explore it properly.
I would have liked this a lot more if I hadn't read the Meg series first, but it was a nice distraction while I impatiently wait for another Meg book.
I think this book was just too short; they don't even find out what the creature is until the end of the book, and then it just ends with no real resolution.
Since I'm a huge nerd, though, I did absolutely love the rebuttals about other species that have appeared again after being thought extinct for years. (Megamouth, coelacanth, etc.) I think it's a bit presumptuous for scientists to 100% say that something doesn't exist in the ocean anymore just because we haven't seen it in awhile. The ocean is a mighty big place, and we haven't even begun to explore it properly.
I would have liked this a lot more if I hadn't read the Meg series first, but it was a nice distraction while I impatiently wait for another Meg book.
June 8, 2013
Author Peter Benchley described a megaladon shark as "a locomotive with a mouth full of butcher knives," a description I still remember despite having read Jaws about thirty-five years ago. Extinct is a realistic thriller about megaladons showing up off of the coast of Mississippi and doing with megaladons do best: eating things. Deer. Boats. People. This was a fun book, fast paced and interesting. I had some difficulty picturing the setting--large salt marshes on the edge of the Gulf Coast; it just didn't seem realistic that a 30 foot shark (baby megaladons) could maneuver in water that shallow, but apparently the channels are quite deep. I did enjoy the US Navy characters, especially the admiral whose passion was prehistoric sharks. Overall, a fun beach read. Better written that most books like this.
August 2, 2011
A moderately interesting book that I bought for one reason only: that it would be easy to read and invoke confidence in my language skills. This was the first novel I read in German, after four months absorbing the language. Unsurprisingly it was an easy read and I quickly moved on to literature of greater substance and more interesting vocabulary. The content of the book? Something about the ancestors of the Great White still being with us.
July 8, 2015
You want shark scares? Here are your shark scares. One after another for hundreds of pages. There are a few silly scientific mistakes, the characters are standard, and the structure is occasionally confusing with its quick-fire scene flipping... But do you care? No, you do not. You want sharks!
December 28, 2017
WOW WONDERFUL HORROR STORY
I liked the story. It kept you attention and sent chills down your spine.
I should get this book and read it. You might never go back in the water again. READ THIS.
I liked the story. It kept you attention and sent chills down your spine.
I should get this book and read it. You might never go back in the water again. READ THIS.
November 19, 2015
Pretty good. Sometimes it was hard to visualize what was happening.
July 9, 2017
Come on who doesn't love a giant shark book, perfect for reading at the pool or better yet the beach.
November 20, 2017
If you like Jaws then this is a good book for you. The action doesn't stop.
July 31, 2019
EXTINCT is a fast-paced novel of unimagined terror arising from the depths. When something very much like a great white shark, but bigger, begins cutting a bloody swath up the Mississippi coast, marine bioligist Alan Freeman teams up with beautiful charter boat captain Carolyn Haines to track it down. But the navy's own eccentric Admiral Vandiver is also on the unidentified sea-monster's trail...will Vandiver's personal quest be a boon to Alan and Carolyn, or consign them and Carolyn's young son to a terrible death? Author Charles Wilson knows exactly how to turn the screws on his readers and the action and suspense in this one will keep you glued from one breathless page to the next. And while EXTINCT doesn't have time for deep introspection, Wilson does make his characters interesting and relatively believable. Also, the idea of a huge man-eating shark getting into a coastal river isn't as outrageous as some reviewers have stated--it's actually happened a number of times, and while the bull shark is the most common intruder, other sharks (including the infamous great white) have turned the same trick, so Wilson's plot is hardly impossible. Though not a literary landmark, EXTINCT is solid, gripping good fun, and what's wrong with that? Sometimes a little escapism is just what we need.
July 31, 2023
When I was a kid, I lived in Biloxi, Mississippi, and I read this book. It scared the shit out of me, as I lived in and frequented all the places talked about in this book where a shark eats a human. ::laugh:: I never forgot reading this. I forgot the name of the book, and the author, but we found our way back together.
It is not as scary as I remembered, now that I live in land-locked Colorado, but it's still written so well, so intense, so easy to keep turning pages. I don't love the jumping through so many random POVs, but otherwise it was great. Who doesn't love a giant, prehistoric shark eating people?! I'm glad to have found this book and read it's again as an adult.
It is not as scary as I remembered, now that I live in land-locked Colorado, but it's still written so well, so intense, so easy to keep turning pages. I don't love the jumping through so many random POVs, but otherwise it was great. Who doesn't love a giant, prehistoric shark eating people?! I'm glad to have found this book and read it's again as an adult.
September 18, 2024
I'm a fan of killer sea monster(especially sharks) books. This one wasn't great. I'm sure if I'd read it in high school then I'd have thought it was fine, but as it stands it's a bit predictable. A lot of the description isn't great and left me confused as to what was going on. And there's a 50 foot shark that, when people see it, they don't seem that awe-struck by it.
I dunno about you, but if I saw a 50 foot shark coming out of the water, I'd be pretty shocked...
I dunno about you, but if I saw a 50 foot shark coming out of the water, I'd be pretty shocked...
October 1, 2018
A fun creature-feature. The pace of the writing never slows, it's one quick hit after the other. It's not amazing prose, but is a fun read. You will enjoy this book if you enjoyed, Jaws, Creature or The Beast. You may not enjoy this book if you need tight writing structure with few questionable holes in the plot.
February 16, 2022
this book had so much going for it but sadly it failed to deliver. an amazing idea of giant sharks attacking just like jaws but on a bigger scale but yet it just felt like nothing happens till the last few chapters a lot of build up on different characters in which he loves to jump between makes this book a very hard boring slow read
March 30, 2020
creepy
Creepy as hell but a bit much. I loved the inteligence angle to a point but it was a bit much combined with the group or family angle. But then again....I NEEDED it to be a bit much. lol
Creepy as hell but a bit much. I loved the inteligence angle to a point but it was a bit much combined with the group or family angle. But then again....I NEEDED it to be a bit much. lol
July 23, 2022
More like a 3.5
This was the right book at the right time for me. Definitely interesting and it kept me reading because I was in the mood for a sharky book. The action comes really late in the story though, which was a little disappointing for me. I still enjoyed it overall.
This was the right book at the right time for me. Definitely interesting and it kept me reading because I was in the mood for a sharky book. The action comes really late in the story though, which was a little disappointing for me. I still enjoyed it overall.
January 28, 2023
Written like a summer movie, I think the author was hoping for a chance to get his story on the big screen. Unfortunately this doesn't translate well into a novel. The characters are flat and fairly one-dimensional and the plot is overwhelmingly predictable.
July 13, 2023
Great book for any Summer Shark Week read! If I have one gripe? It’s the long-winded Searcher’s Analysis sequences. If you read it, you’ll know best I mean. When you do, you’ll probably be like me and scan through quickly so you can get back to the good stuff.
February 23, 2024
If you were disappointed with the focus on adultery in Jaws (the reason I didn't finish it) then this book is a much better substitute. Still includes a bit of (healthy) romance, this book is more focused on the shark than Jaws felt like.
September 25, 2019
Jaws, with a big, prehistoric shark. Bad screenplay masquerading as a bad book.
May 20, 2020
Very disappointing.
January 10, 2022
A fun if predictable creature feature. I wanted to like it a lot more than I did. If you like shark stories give it a read. If not, best to pass.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 56 reviews