Arkangel by James Rollins - book review

 Arkangel happens to be the latest edition in the sigma series, one of the most prolific novel series ever with almost over a dozen stories on the ultra secret US government agency, whose job is to protect the world from unfathomable dangers and challenges presented to the very existence of human life and not just American (for a change). 

The core strength of all of those stories being the unbelievingly original plot involving famous personalities or places or characters or situations, that get dragged into the plot, which unless thwarted by the Sigma team, and in the hands of the villain team, may potentially get weaponized and lead to global destruction or human extinction. In fact almost all of the stories in the series could be snuck into this plot and yet he manages to churn novel after novel into best sellers says about the skill of the author. Arkangel, fails miserably in this aspect for it already has that hook plot to keep the viewers interested. This time, Sigma force is in search of the famous "Golden library" of Ivan the terrible, which has clues to a long lost or mythical region called hyperborea, which Russia is desperate to claim as its own and hence the entire Arctic, establishing them as descendants of a superior race. Even to type it as a summary it feels to dull but Arkangel happens to be one of the biggest and most voluminous of the novels written by Rollins, clearly showing the struggles the author underwent in making a meal of the wafer thin plot. He has tried to throw in a couple of interesting pieces from his previous creations like flesh eating plants, navigators map of several centuries back and the compass kind of device they used at that time, all of which had already found a place in his previous books. Seems like he ran out of steam and just out of publisher pressure to keep up the supply line of one book per year, he might've dished this out. The involvement of Tucker/Kane- the famed master and his god due on this book, his other famous creation having its own running series, and the ending especially involving nuclear detonation is nothing but a desperate attempt to throw in every trick on book, literally, and it only fails miserably. In fact, he himself, in his closing notes, has mentioned that the sigma force will be back with a bang in the next edition (hopefully!!)