Tides of fire by James Rollins – book review

Another interesting novel by Rollins with an intriguing premise. Typically, his premises will involve global devastation by manmade or historical/urban legend kind of weapons, where the good guys (SIGMA team) and bad guys race/fight against each other to own the weapon. Off late, be it in movies and now even on novels, Russians seems to have been replaced by Chinese as the antagonists for American heroes. Ditto with this book as well. In fact, for last couple of books what was being hinted, is a full-blown battle between PLA and SIGMA team, where in, like every Hollywood movie, the good guys in the bad guys team, side up with the good guys team (read Americans) and fight against their own team, to save the world. The premise in Tides of fire being mother earth and her secrets under the sea, being fought over to be made as the ultimate weapon.  

Couple of things that made me wonder once the book got over were – was this really written by Rollins or ghost written by Matthew Reilley!! Be it the story line, those submersible vessels, the description of the research vehicle, the size and scale of the setup, the kind of language used to describe those settings, which literally confuse the reader from imagining how big or vast such a structure would be, only to find it destroyed like a blown out balloon in the end, the scale of destruction that is feared in the beginning and the ease with which it gets arrested in the end by the good guys – all reek of Reilley more and Rollins less. Even though both have similar style when it comes with delivering such pulp fiction kind of themes, Rollins versions were usually more on the biological aspects of the threat and less on the engineering side. In fact, the book has a few diagrams as well that serve as visual aid, to help the users in getting acclimatized with the setup is something that is quite common on Reilley’s Jack west Jr series. Nevertheless, the gargantuan task of handling such devastation and how easily or ridiculously weird way in which the good guy’s team solve the situation is quite common on both their creations. 

Like how butterfly wing flap results in storms elsewhere (possibly the crudest way in which chaos theory is mentioned ever in written form!!) creation of moon, which was nothing but a piece of early earth, that got broken due to collision with a planetoid called Theia, and the connection that still exists between that break way piece called moon and those that are buried deep under the sea on present day earth, how that connection gets rekindled resulting in volcanic eruptions and earthquakes across the globe forms the central knot of the story. The Chinese moon lander tries to dig up some samples in moon surface and due to some frequency emission, there triggers a tectonic response under the oceans on earth. The substance on moon and the breakaway pieces on ocean floor are interconnected apparently and the frequency emitted by the lander, wakes up those dormant volcanoes, resulting in literal doomsday scenario with tsunamis and ash clouds hovering all over the world. There is a historical reference as well and there are notes as to how folks averted the disaster. The solution being, make some noise using a lasso like tool and that frequency would counter the bad frequency, nullifying the disaster! Only catch being it need to be LOUD for the deep-sea creature(!?) to hear!! 

The Sigma team, as usual are present, right at the center of all these happenings and manage to crack centuries old puzzles and clues in matter of minutes. Their Chinese counterparts are picturized as typical maniacal heartless villains who are stupid enough to think, by controlling the frequency that causes volcanic eruptions worldwide they can be the supreme power!! Of all the books I’ve read, and movies seen, these are the dumbest villain team ever!! There is a sub plot of, the sea creatures, planktons, polyps, or whatever they are called and classified, eats away the bones of the exposed folks, making it charcoal black and dead. The good guys team manages to make a simple cure for that as well on the fly!! The way in which deep sea has been explained is totally bonkers. It was like reading transcript of deep sea diving from Discovery channel!! Too much technical and detailed that only adds up to the page count. The ending is already sowing the seed for the next episode of the sigma series with a lady villain from previous book, who makes a fleeting appearance in this one, is already sowing seeds of destruction for the next episode. Looking forward to that release already!

Overall, for Rollins fans, this book would be a definite treat. But controlling nature like a toy is something that I find indigestible as a plot! If you start a volcano with a frequency and stop it with another sound, well it sounds as ridiculous as it really reads! With all the technical mumbo jumbo, Rollins does what he usually does and comes out with a story that is racy and pulsating as usual.