Customer Reviews

Link

5 star:		(72)
4 star:		(26)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(13)
1 star:		(30)

 

 

If you spend time on UFO sites on the Web or if you read books positing iconoclastic hypotheses about ancient civilizations by authors such as Graham Hancock, Zacharia Sitchen, Erich von Daniken and others of that ilk, then this is the novel for you. If you are a stickler about the science in science fiction being accurate, then this book will probably offend your sensibilities, since whatever Walt Becker studied at UCLA and USC, it clearly was not anatomy or physics. The most glaring knee-slapper in the book is where the hero slashes the "aorta" of one of the baddies, which, curiously, is located in his throat (your aorta and mine are located in our chests, as in directly connected to our hearts). The discussion of thermodynamics and nukes is likewise clearly uninformed, which is a distracting flaw in an author who appears to aspire to Michael Crichton's mantle by the mixing of science and fiction.

The problem is, as noted in many of the other reader reviews, much of the science is dead wrong and much of what is passed off as science is the sort of New Age babble on which many authors make a good living. And some of the good science is misrepresented, following the lead of the New Age babble authors referenced above.

Having said all of that, the novel is not as bad as the worst reviews on here would lead you to believe. Sure, the characters are one-dimensional. Sure, the action is basically Indiana Jones meets Michael Crichton meets Erich von Daniken. And, sure, Becker could have used a few more characters on the good guy team so that the Sancho Panza-like scientist sidekick of his protagonist did not have to be a polymath (this guy was so expert in so many different disciplines at the age of 30, he must not have had time to sleep).

But, hey, it was still interesting and entertaining for what it was: a flawed first novel by a guy who hopes to get rich the way Crichton did. I read it and enjoyed it even though bothered by the superficial writing, shallow characters and predictable action. The ideas were interestingly presented and were a familiar echo of the X-files. It is not great literature and would be an inexcusable fifth novel, but, hey, this guy not only got published but got reprinted in paperback. Do I wish he'd written a better book to support his theme of alien "improvement" of humankind? Sure, but it's still entertaining.

One final note: many of the criticisms leveled at this book could be made with equal force as to Crichton, Tom Clancy and John Grisham, just to name a few. Anyone who read Airframe or any of Clancy's or Grisham's later novels knows what I'm talking about. These guys also broke faith with their fans by offering up shallow characters, predictable, formulaic rehashes of well-worn plots and unlikely premises. Why? For the same reason Becker did: to make money.

I recommended this book to others and still do. It's fun, which is more than I can say for some of the recent offerings from those established, prosperous authors. To those who were vituperative in their reviews, I say, "Lighten up!"

A friend of mine recommended this book because she wanted my opinion on the science. What science? This author has no respect for the actual science he purports to have researched (for a whole 18 months, no less!).

The paleoanthropological search of humanity's origins is actually such as fascinating story, but you won't find it here. With fiction allegedly based on science there's no excuse for the basic science to be dead wrong--especially with this author's afterword. Carbon dating volcanic flows? Civilizations springing up from nothing? I recommend Becker take a few basic archaeology and/or anthropology classes--or read some of the basic literature--before he tries again with this topic.

When I picked up the book and saw that the action took place in Mali and dealt with paleoanthropology, I just had to have it. To my disappointment, the chapters about Mali are so frought with mistakes(e. g. the Dogon are not a warrior society but peaceful farmers. They don't hop up and down like Massai. The Songhai don't live close to the Dogon but in the North of Mali. Mali is not in Central but in West Africa. Etc. etc.) Add to that the gratuitous violence and hairbrained action about the anthropologists being armed with machine guns and having South African guards. I spent four years in Mali as a Peace Corps volunteer and can guarantee that the author never set foot there or even did careful research. An awful book I don't recommend to anyone.

For the first few chapters of this book, I kept glancing at the front cover to see if it was Walt Becker I was reading or Michael Crichton. This isn't because the book is as good as anything Crichton has written, it's just a near perfect mimic of Crichton's style.

That said, I will admit that I enjoyed this book all the way through. It's a fun but predictable story in which you never feel the bad guys are all that dangerous and you never squirm when the good guys are in trouble because you know they will always find a way out of their jam. The two dimisionality of the characters doesn't allow you to feel anything for them--sympathy for the good buys or loathing for the bad guys--and they are simply frameworks around which the larger story is spun. And that larger story, while intriguing enough at the beginning involving the reader with a fascinating premise, starts to break down towards the end and turns into little more than a cheap Clancy knock-off involving the CIA, DEA, drug cartels, and the US Navy and Airforce.

It's this last part of the story that causes the book to lose steam. While Becker did a competent enough job emulating Crichton, he lacks the authority and inside knowledge that have made Clancy's books so fascinating. The mindless action and thin characters leave the reader with little investment in the story, and when the book concludes, it eminates a dull thud. With so many loose threads, the ending felt more like a "writer's escape" than a real conclusion, and the hanging ending is just a cheap way of telling readers "Look for the sequel in a bookstore near you!"

While lacking Crichton's precision and Clancy's detail, the book is competently written but with an obvious rookie's air (why did everybody have to widen the beam everytime they turned on a flashlight?) If you're looking for mindless entertainment to pass the time on your next plane trip, then give this one a shot. It's a fun book with an intriguing premise, a predictable plot, underdeveloped characters, a satisfying pace, and a rather haphazard conclussion. You won't mistake Becker for a seasoned author, but there are worse books you could read.

This book started out with such promise. It was one of those we came from outer space a zillion years ago plots, but then the author got lost in his theory about how he related every wierd thing in the world into one universal answer and the last 50 pages were rough going.

As one of the authors to whom Walt Becker acknowledges a debt, I feel, first, compelled to correct information attributed to me within the body of this certainly exciting adventure book, and second to respond to Becker's questions about our primitive ancestors in his "Afterword." In his chapter, "The Lake" he states that in studying the Osiris myth of Ancient Egypt I discovered that all the numbers needed to calculate the length of years for precession to bring about the "Great Return" were to be found in the ancient myth. Although Graham Hancock ("Fingerprints of the Gods") also attributed this to me, it is exceedingly misleading and not at all what I wrote.(These numbers make their appearance in Plutarch's account of the Osiris story...after Hipparchus has made his "discovery" of precession.) As for the questions Becker poses about how ancient cultures could have possibly calculated such things as the circumference of the earth, Becker displays his ignorance of such simple solutions as that used by Etatosthenes in the 3rd Century BC.Jane B Sellers jane@thesellersplace.com

I know a book is not capturing my interest when I have to force myself to read it and have a hard time getting caught up in what I'm reading. This is like a book written from the script of a bad TV movie. The most appealing aspect about science fiction (and I am a big fan of the genre) is discovering something or someone in the story is not what they seem, and subsequently having to figure out what is really going on after all. In this book, however, the hapless author telegraphs exactly what the significance of the artifacts that the characters find so far ahead that you become irritated with how slowly the story unfolds. Mr. Becker may have done research to back his plot, but his writing ability just doesn't do justice to the material. Too bad, this would have been a good story in the hands of a talented writer. Not worth reading, unless you enjoy being bored.

Mr. Becker's novel features a quest for Homo Sapien's mysterious origin - the result of alien contact. The fictional scientist-hero dismisses evolution and Darwinian theory, and believes in New Age pyramid power, as well as the linking of various ancient astronomy sites in the New and Old World. He is inspired by Rupert Sheldrake's pseudoscience of morphogenetic fields linking life forms. The story also includes alien-created cold fusion, whole earth crust shifting, Atlantis, etc. At bottom we have a scientist who dismisses much of modern physics, astronomy, geology, biology, anthropology, etc. Based on this book, and Becker's uniquely filtered set of references, it appears that the author is much the same sort of fellow.

Walt Becker includes a three page Afterword plus fifty references from his "18 months of research" for this novel. In the Afterword he claims his novel is very close to an actual revolution going on in the scientific community. This is news to the scientific community.

Mr. Becker lists 50 (real) references, some of which are thoroughly legitimate, but he ignores the vast content of modern science in concocting his story. This is no way to write good science fiction. Becker has degrees from UCLA and USC. It is clear that these major universities failed to instill in this young man any real sense of the nature of modern science.

I suppose Mr. Becker's idea was to make the book look something like a Michael Crichton or a Richard Preston (The Cobra Event) novel. Crichton and Preston do comprehensive research, and have a good understanding of what science is about. They do a fine job of depicting science and the contemporary scene. Becker, on the other hand, attempts to hijack our sense of wonder using some of the worst sort of warmed over pseudoscience. It appears he was inspired by two pseudoscience sources: Robert Temple's The Sirius Mystery, and NBC's ludicrous and worst ever "documentary": The Mysterious Origins of Man. (for critiques see e.g.:Ortiz de Montellano, B. R.; "The Dogon People Revisited"; Skeptical Inquirer, Nov./Dec. 1996. Ridpath, Ian: Messages from the Stars, esp. Ch. 13, Harper & Row, 1978. Sagan, Carl; Broca's Brain, Ch. 6; Random House, 1979. Thomas, Dave; Skeptical Briefs, March 1996.)

Mr. Becker does not reference Dr. E. C. Krupp, one of the world's foremost experts on ancient astronomy. This is curious, since Dr. Krupp is the Director of Griffith Observatory in Mr. Becker's home town of Los Angeles, and has taught archaeoastronony at Becker's alma mater, UCLA. The truth is out there Mr. Becker, in fact it was only just a local phone call away. Ed Krupp has an appropriate sense of responsibility to inform the reader and would have filled you in. That would have saved us all some time and money.

I am completely willing to "suspend my disbelief" in a work of fiction such as "Link". However, when a work of fiction purports to be based on scientific research but instead is a repeated misrepresentation of basic science fact, then my disbelief cannot be suspended. Mr. Becker's character,Jack, spouts creationist nonsense and misrepresents evolutionary theory (including: no transitional fossils have ever been found and the presence of modern crocodiles refutes evolution) over and over again. Jack has no inkling of the second law of thermodynamics (he seems to think that life itself breaks the second law). The second law of thermodynamics applies only when there is no external energy source in a closed system but in the case of our earth we have a large external energy source: our Sun. There are also just some laughable boo-boos which should have been picked up during editing such as when a man shot in the neck dies clutching his "aorta". I cannot recommend this book.

I absolutely loved this novel. Link is fast paced, action packed and filled to the brim with interesting bits of history. Who knew that learning about ancient civilizations could be so much fun.

While digging deep in the desert Samantha uncovers something incredible. Something that could rock the way we view humanity's origins. With the help of her colleague Ricardo she brings her old flame, Jack back to help with the dig. The situation becomes heated when Jack and Samantha's current flame, Dorn go head to head.

The dig leads them to the jungles of South America and to another ancient relic that might uncover something so fantastic and devastating that the world may never be the same.

Link is simply an excuse to let your imagination run wild. Walt Becker also based his plot on many tales of old, research and respected figures findings in the world of astronomy, archaeology, math and history. Link is eye and mind opening for those who are willing to look beyond it's premise as a thriller and see it for the amazing amount of research involved in the writing of it.

This book is a good read for those who enjoy thrillers, archaeology and ancient civilizations, outer space, Indiana Jones or the X-Files. Link kept me on the edge of my seat and I could not put it down. I can't wait to read more of Becker's work.