The Trench
Ratings21
Average rating3.6
THE TRENCH was a good read. I enjoyed the whole book, especially the parts that take place in the abyss. I was a bit annoyed that Alten added another creature - Kronosaurus - to “his list of surviving prehistoric monsters”. Wasn't the Megalodon enough? Anyways,when the Kronosaurs made their first appearance, I was like “HUH?”. How could possibly an giant, air-breathing prehistoric marine reptile survive in the depths of the ocean? By evolving gills of course! At least that's how Alten imagined it...
THE TRENCH was a very nice novel overall, although I did not like Alten's “speculative evolution” of the Kronosaurus.
Gave this a go when I saw that all except for 2 are currently included with audible. Just in time to head into October spooky reads, and I love some scifi shark horror.
This book took the writing to all new heights. All new heights or scientific inaccuracies that is... the author has a group of Kronosaurus living in the Mariana Trench. Not only have they survived millions of years, but clearly they have evolved to have gills, therefore they can live in the trench! Which that part is fine because if it could survive for millions of years, sure it may have evolved. But what gets me is the choice of a kronosaur, which was believe to be an INLAND sea marine reptile. Now it's in the Mariana tench?
It is strange to me that the book continually describes the megalodons as being albino, practically luminescent in the water they are so white, and yet every cover on the series is so lazy that it's just a great white made to look big, not even colored to appear white. And I'll complain again, Meg and the great white...not that closely related, they'd look different! This book focuses on Angel, the Meg pup that was captured at the end of book 1. Somehow it has only been four years and the meg has grown to over 70ft, larger than the largest Meg ever found (the average of which is 30ft in the fossil records, and these sharks could have lived to like 100). The author tries to explain this by it being in heavily oxygenated water, as opposed to the tench. But that argument would suggest that the megs mother would have been smaller due to growing in the trench, however she was also 64ft, so that seems invalidated. Okay...I'm sorry for the random history argument
This book introduces the Tanaka's business partner Benedict Singer. He is willing to do absolutely anything to get what he wants. He is to this book what the mob was to Jaws. You can really tell that this author idolizes Jaws, because he cannot seem to write a different plot line. They also have in common the fact that apparently marriages cannot be happy. The love interests seem to only exist to give the books a happy ending, they are always in strife the next book.
All that complaining aside, as well as the fact that even with the added baddie and more monsters it's the exact same story twice, it's actually still quite fun. There's just something about such a large shark churning the ocean red. Personally a 4/5*, we'll see how many of these I can stand.
I rather liked the Meg movie with Jason Stratham.
I did not like the book it is vaguely based on.
It appears the writers of the movie took the main characters name and the idea of a giant shark
and skipped most of the first book.
This was a good idea.
I didn't like the second book at all.
A cartoon supervillain, descriptions of horrible cruelty apparently because that's fun.
There is another giant creature down in the trench ( what do these enormous animals eat down there besides each other? The ecology make no sense).
Watch the movie, skip the books
