Lara Croft wakes up under the rubble from a collapsed temple, and is rescued by a fellow archaeologist Kevin Mason. When she regains consciousness in a Cairo Hospital Mason is curious about why she was in the Temple of Horus. He tells Lara of a legend concerning the Amulet of Mareish, an ancient device that grants untold powers to a believer who wears the amulet.

Unfortunately for Lara there are two opposing factions who seek the amulet – religious fanatics who wish to gain the device and use it to further their cause, and a group of people who wish to find the amulet to destroy it and prevent it from ever being used again.

Both of these factions believe that Lara has this amulet and will not hesitate to kill her to gain it. As she has not got the device and has no easy way of proving this, this could be tricky. Also given the fact that Lara is concussed and not in a position to defend herself things don't look that good.

Fortunately Kevin Mason is on hand to help and they flee the hospital. Deciding the only way they might be able to stay alive is to find the amulet themselves they head off into the Sudan to track down one lead that Mason had as to its whereabouts.

Mike Resnick has written a Lara Croft novel. Sounds odd. Having been a fan of Mike Resnick's writing for a few years I decided I had to read this to find out what it was like. Well, it's okay, not brilliant and certainly not up to the standards of his other books - but it is definitely readable – and this comes from someone who has never seen even a screen shot of any Lara Croft game.

The action moves rather rapidly in this book, but readers of Resnick will not find this particularly surprising. But this is not speed at the expense of characters or background – Resnick has this knack of knowing exactly how many words to use to get his point across without having to belabour it.

This book, however, is not classic Resnick and does feel a little limited by the range of the Lara Croft universe. It does however benefit from Mike Resnick's own knowledge of Africa, he knows these places and you can feel this in his words. In many ways this is a glorified travelogue.

This is a pleasant read and should satisfy fans of the games, but for anyone who wants to experience Mike Resnick's writing, you would be better advised to go for Dark Lady, Ivory or Santiago.