Not so long ago, a friend of mine who lives out in California recommended some books by two authors who usually work as collaborators. He told me that Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child write the kind of fiction that I would greatly enjoy. Since he's usually dead-on with his recommendations, I decided to listen to his advice. So, on one of my regular jaunts through the local Waldenbooks, I picked up several of their collaborations, went home and set them in place on one of my "as-yet-unread" bookshelves.

The first of these that I picked up was RELIC, their first collaborative effort. Some of you may remember the movie that was made based on this novel a few years ago...some of you, if you did see it, might NOT remember it - unfortunately, the film was something of an unremarkable adaptation. However, the novel was quite the opposite! RELIC was a winner, through and through, a complete nail-biter, a thriller, a page-turner...you get the picture. I was thrilled with RELIC and wanted more of the same from those other Preston/Child collaborations sitting on my shelf. The one I turned to next was RELIQUARY, the sequel to RELIC. I opened the first page with great anticipation, and although the book was a good story in and of itself, it never quite lived up to the reputation that RELIC had made for it. I wasn't exactly disappointed but I would say that I was not satisfied.

Pushing that experience behind me, I recently scanned the titles of the other Preston/ Child novels sitting on my "as-yet-unread" bookshelf and pulled down their second effort, MOUNT DRAGON (RELIQUARY was their third book together). Here was a book that promised a story of a different kind. Instead of monsters and museums and a creepy maze of underground New York City tunnels, MOUNT DRAGON was set out in the desert of New Mexico, on the White Sands Missile Range. This was a story of Genetic Research gone bad, of scientists infected, of a Doomsday Virus that would ravage the world and leave the human race struggling to survive. I opened my paperback copy, flipped through the title pages and saw a series of detailed maps to help me along as the story progressed. I was excited! Here was a novel that I knew would race along! Building up to an amazing and thought provoking climax!

But, something happened as I raced through this book. Yes, it was a page-turner. Yes, it dealt with scientific research gone awry. Yes, it had its share of scientists infected. But... I also got the feeling, as the story progressed, that this was a book that had lost its purpose or, at the very least, was struggling to find it. The story is of a young scientist with a rancher's background who is plucked from thousands of employees by the eccentric owner of the corporate conglomerate known as GeneDyne and told that there is important work needing to be done out in New Mexico. He is given a very short time to think it over and, if the position is accepted, grab a few things and fly across the country that very same day. Once there, the highly secretive and heavily fortified research station known as Mount Dragon, Guy Carson quickly gets to work on a proposed cure for influenza. If Carson is successful, the human race would be permanently and utterly immune to all present and future forms of the flu. It would be a medical breakthrough, a genetic marvel and a procedure that would end up altering human genetics in such a way that we, as a species, would from that point on be different beings. It would be controversial, it would be radical and it would mean billions of dollars for GeneDyne and that eccentric owner mentioned earlier, Brent Scopes.

Now, here is where the book goes a bit off-course. The first couple of hundred pages build up the extreme danger to humanity that is inherent in all Biological Hazard novels. It builds the main characters, making them come alive, and puts them in dangerous situations to let us know how they cope when under such stress. The science is interesting enough to keep those pages turning, leaving the reader to wonder where the book is going? What will happen next? Will the world be wiped free of the human disease or will the breakthrough take place and all will end well? Because of the strange turn that this book takes, some of these questions never get answered. Instead, the story becomes one of fugitives chased across the desert by a lone madman, bent on revenge. In a bizarre sub-plot, an old friend and currently bitter rival of Brent Scopes tracks the GeneDyne mastermind down in his high-security headquarters building and confronts him with some of the bad science that his corporation is about to unleash upon the world. Both of these plots forge ahead, going down weirdly different paths, taking the reader into places that are not only unexpected but out of tune with the first several hundred pages of the book. I think that somewhere along the way, the true driving force of MOUNT DRAGON was somehow misplaced or forgotten. At first, it promised to be a hair-raising novel of human extinction or biological terror on a large scale, bringing the world to the brink of disaster. Instead, the various plots diverged from that path, built toward very different conclusions and told a story of a much different kind.

Having said all this, I have to say that I enjoyed MOUNT DRAGON. I appreciated the fact that this book was not just another apocalyptic genetic doomsday story. I'm happy that the plots changed so drastically and headed down lesser pathways that were not as clearly defined as some of the more obvious pathways would have been to the reader. The science was engaging, the idea of an extremely lethal virus hanging over the entire novel, threatening to be unleashed at any moment, did help to move the sub-plots along. Preston and Child succeeded in delivering a different type of story than I expected in MOUNT DRAGON and, for that, at the very least they deserve my praise. The writing in this novel is crisp, the characters well defined, the situations grave and pulse-pounding (at times). All in all, a satisfying if somewhat strange read. Because of this book, I am highly anticipating some of their other collaborative titles: RIPTIDE, THUNDERHEAD, THE ICE LIMIT and, the newly released, THE CABINET OF CURIOSITIES.

I keep saying to myself, if their first three books were able to deliver some very good stuff, imagine the potential for even greater story telling in their later efforts. MOUNT DRAGON won't be for all readers of "thriller" type fiction but it is a novel that will satisfy those readers who appreciate being t aken on a different type of ride than the one they first thought they were riding.

Reviewed by Shawn P. Madison