Encounter by Hep Aldridge
Encounter by Hep Aldridge
The best part of this book is the first couple of chapters in which the heroes deal with legal challenges that come from finding sunken treasure in an earlier novel. It’s important material presented in an interesting way. First, it tells us that the heroes are unethical, having failed to report the first approximately $2 billion worth of treasure they uncovered. It also shows that they are very smart and technically capable. You like them, even though they are essentially thieves. It was very well done,
Things proceed in the expected manner for the next roughly 60% of the novel—there’s plenty of action and interesting problems to overcome. Our heroes are searching for a mythical lost library in the jungles of Ecuador—a library that reportedly contains within it the secret of immortality among other treasures. Two groups (one a team of brutal Vatican mercenaries) are trying to catch our treasure hunters so they can torture the location of the library out of them before murdering them.
All of that comes to a close when they find the library a little more than halfway through the book. They defeat those pursuing them and encounter a possibly artificial intelligence left by aliens who have been visiting our planet for tens of thousands of years. At this point the adventure basically ends and we are presented with chapter after chapter of “seemingly too good to be true” wonders being presented to our treasure hunters. Cynic that I can be, I naturally thought that the alien’s efforts to get the team to help it fix its power supply were going to eventually reveal it to be a terrible threat to the planet. But no, that’s not what happens. Everything is sweetness and light for the rest of the novel except for a short ending that resolves the legal problems of the first couple of chapters.
Honestly, I can’t understand why Aldridge chose to end the story in this manner, other than he obviously is preparing for a sequel. Adventure stories thrive on conflict, and there frankly isn’t any for almost half the book. I enjoyed the first part, but I was definitely disappointed by the last several chapters.
