19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
FATALIS WILL "ROAR" ON THE BIG-SCREEN, August 3, 2000
Fatalis is one of those books that you can read and just picture the movie that it COULD become. There's nothing too in depth, and the characters are only slightly deeper than those in say Jurassic Park. Now, this may sound like a bad thing, but this book kept me reading and left me thoroughly entertained the entire time. It doesn't have the sheer kinetic energy of Rovin's last book VESPERS (which I highly recommend) but it does have a better conflict.
In FATALIS, you have two sides - Sheriff Gearhart who is looking to safe human life at any cost and Jim Grand who wants to save the "returned" Sabre-tooth cats. Obviously one is HERO and one is ANTAGONIST, however as I read this I found myself taking strange sides. It's a tough thing to follow a 'hero' who seems more preoccupied with saving an animal than with all of the innocents who are being slaughtered around him...and believe me there is a HUGE body count in this book.
All in all I'd say buy Fatalis, read it, and wait for the movie...which if Hollywood was smart...will be made!
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17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good old fashioned horror, May 27, 2000
They were ancient predators though to have become extinct in the last Ice Age. At least two have survived by being cryogenically frozen in the heart of a glacier. When the glacier melts, the duo make their home inside the caves in the Santa Ynez Mountains near Santa Barbara. No one realizes they live there even though they kill humans. Sheriff Malcolm Gearhart is determined to hunt down the mass murderer who is leaving no clues at the crime scene save for an enormous amount of the victims' blood.
Paleoanthropologist Jim Grand studies some ancient Chumish drawings in one of the Santa Ynez caves when he finds some strange looking fur that he brings back to the college lab to be analyzed. Hannah Hughes, owner and publisher of the daily newspaper The Coastal Freeway, interviews Professor Grand. He shows her his find, fur that belongs to a living Smilidon fatalis. Hannah accompanies Jim back to the cave to see if they can locate the creature while the Sheriff tries to flush out the cave dwellers and kill them before the public learns they exist. Nobody realizes how cunning and intelligent these creatures really are or what their true agenda is.
Fans of Godzilla and Mothra movies will enjoy reading this modern day horror novel where the villains are prehistoric beings living in the twenty-first century. The audience will chillingly relish how effortlessly the monsters adapt to civilization. Jeff Rovin never allows the audience the luxury of knowing who is hunting whom, a situation that adds to the overall enjoyment of the story line. FATALIS should be a large success for the author whose vivid descriptions make for an easy movie adaptation.
Harriet Klausner
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Wholly implausible, but an exciting read nonetheless!, March 30, 2002
This review is from: Fatalis: A Novel (Mass Market Paperback)
"Fatalis" is the type of book that you pick up in the bookstore, read the back cover, shake your head in disbelief of the plot, yet buy anyway. Jeff Rovin, as eclectic an author as one will find writing today, definitely knows how to spin a "yarn". (See two of his other works, "Vespers" and "The Return of the Wolf Man" as examples.)
"Fatalis" is the story of a pack sabre-tooth tigers that reanimate after some climate and topicgraphical changes to terrorize Santa Barbara, CA, on the way to their (famous) ancestral home. Hunted down by the local sheriff, a war-hardened Vietnam vet who has taken the tigers appearance in his town personal, the story also centers on the attempt of an anthropologist to resurrect his own life, while trying to save that of the tigers. Rounding out the triangle is a newspaper reporter desparately seeking personal and professional respect.
If you can accept the premise regarding the appearance of the tigers, then you'll soon find yourself immersed in a pretty good story. Graphically violent in places, it moves along at a fast clip as it hurdles to the ultimate (and expected) climax.
My main criticisms of the book are that it spends a little too much time regarding the spiritual connection between Jim Grand, the anthropologist, and his mentor college professor-turned-shaman. Their interaction was not all that vital to the development with the plot appearing to be more fluff than substance. The other problem that I had with the book was with the lack of the development of secondary characters. Rovin had a couple of great opportunities to involve some of the interesting fringe characters in the plot, but for some reason chose not to include them to any great degree.
Be that as it may, this is still an enjoyable experience. You won't find any huge plot twists, and, while Rovin can't resist sticking in technical jargon from time to time, it does add something to the story. Like a good Michael Crichton novel, the jargon gives the author a chance to show off a little of his research efforts.
Along that line, if you like the works of Crichton, James Rollins ("Subterranean"), or John Darnton ("Neanderthal"), then you're find this a comparable effort.
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