Kingdom of bones by James Rollins – book review

 This is one book that I’ve been waiting for almost 6 months to lay my hands on. There were multiple India release dates since late 2021 and finally managed to get a copy. Of the list of all James Rollins novels that I’ve read on the sigma series, this is the most voluminous, running to almost 450+ pages. Off late Africa has found a fancy amongst authors I guess, having already exhausted every possible European and American city. Came across a mention of half dozen African countries in a James Patterson novel recently and now this one. There is a common factor in utilizing the locations as well. Couple of words thrown in from the local lingo, mention of French/Belgian/Spanish colonization era, rampant corruption and lawlessness, harsh weather, mosquitoes, forests, exotic animals, natural resources and how they are being exploited and poverty. Replace the setting to anything European, it would be all about architecture, tourists, glowing weather and super smart people. Not a million gods can make these morons think any different.

Coming to the book, I would say, it was one of the most disappointing one ever from Rollins. The USP of his novels, the sigma series at least, would be action at break neck speed from page one. The first chapter would be about some unique event that happened couple of centuries ago and how it all snowballs into an earth shattering event in the present, which the sigma team will prevent by travelling all over the world. In this book, it takes a whole 100 page for the story to take off. All throughout the 100 pages it is all thing bad about Africa and Congo in particular. Finally the sigma team lands, accompanied by Tucker& Kane (another series by Rollins based on the two characters Tucker (a ranger) and Kane (his attack dog)). It is Rollins equivalent of Kamal and Rajini appearing in same screen. But nothing could’ve fizzled out worse. The story deals with a corona like virus outbreak, unleashed by mother nature, because of all the pollution and exploitation of natural resources. The virus alters the gene of both humans, plants and animals in such a way that, it makes the prey weaker and predator stronger so that one can wipe out the other into extinction. As a premise, it sounds interesting and typical Rollins material. But presentation makes me wonder, if he even wrote it or ghost written by someone else. Sigma team manages to escape not one but 2 MOAB (mother of all bombs) explosions and like every maniacal villain, who dies an eviler death, same happens to the villain of this story as well. The semblance of logic as to why the villain does what he is doing, present on his other novels, is outright missing on this one, where initially, he is projected as someone who wants to find the cure for the disease and make money out of it, ends up bombing the source of cure for no reason!! Tamil cinema villains had better sense of reason!! The author in his post credit sections, mentions about Amazonia, another earlier novel of his, which had a similar premise and was several times better. I felt this book was a total let down and felt very un-Rollins like.