Review 40: The Lost City of the Monkey God

The Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Well, this was a disappointment. Big promises of lost cities, exciting tales of discovery and what have you. Instead what we get is this:

- 50 pages about some scary tropical illness the author suffers. I. Really. Do. Not. Care.
- 100 pages of basic history on how diseases completely destroyed pre-Colombian cultures as well as some mildly interesting history, told poorly. Anyone with a passing interest in the history of the Americas knows this. Basic high school textbook stuff.
- Bad jokes. Bad jokes all around.
- No conclusion to anything.
- 50 pages (out of 260 or so) with actual interesting content relating to the premise and title.

This feels very strongly like the author was forced by his editor to stretch out his journal article into a book, and then utterly failed. There is so much fluff here, it's really not worth your time.


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