Sci-Fi & Scary

Earthcore is an interesting, much more foul-mouthed take on Journey to the Center of the Earth in my opinion. Except, in Sigler's version, it's not dinosaurs you come across, but something much more shiny and squishy. Once things get rolling (it takes a while), it's an action-packed adventure. There's one flight from danger after another, and several surprises await you.

And that's about all that I can say that's nice about Earthcore .

One of the things that annoyed me about Earthcore was the sob-story given to the human villain. I see this a lot in books, and I just don't understand it. Am I supposed to feel sorry for the character because s/he had a bad life growing up? Because I don't. I had a rough life growing up myself and I didn't grow up to be a bad person. I grew up still understanding the differences between right and wrong. Making the choice to be a good person. The villain is the villain. They chose to do the wrong things, and, especially when they're geniuses, they do it with full understanding that what they're doing is wrong. I don't care about their life growing up, and telling me about it in some effort to flesh them out only serves to annoy me and detract from the story.

And Scott Sigler does the sob-story not once but twice in Earthcore .  I could almost understand it for the guy, because of the whole 'redeem during the course of the story' factor but the true 'villain'? No. That character is pretty much an evil archetype and trying to redeem them at all was just a waste of page space. Apparently Earthcore started as a much shorter book that was expanded on recently to please the fans. I can't help but think I probably would have preferred it in it's shorter form.

Unfortunately, a trend within Earthcore was that few of the characters were likable. If you spend half the book being annoyed by the mere presence of certain characters on the page, it inevitably detracts from your overall enjoyment.  The only character I actually liked in the whole book was the prospector who finds the platinum to begin with. Well, I liked Sanjay as well, but he was a very minor character. Towards the end of the book, the main scientist, Angus, grated on my nerves so badly that simply listening to the book made me want to reach through my phone and smack the crap out of him. The only way I was able to force myself to go on was to tell myself that he had to die a very horrible death very soon, right?

I like most of Sigler's work that I've read/listened to. Infected was a fantastic audio experience that he narrated himself. However, Earthcore just wasn't something I dug, pardon the pun. In fact, by the end of the book, I truly disliked the book. Ray Porter is the only thing that kept me listening to the audio book at all. The plot had a few definite interesting twists to it, but not enough to save me from wanting to chuck it through the nearest window. 

Can't recommend it, but I know I seem to be in the minority with that opinion, so take my review with a grain of salt.