Page Count:  337

Author:  Steve Alten

Author's Website:  www.stevealten.com

Publisher:  Bantam

ISBN:  0-553-57910-X

Category:  Fiction

Genre:  Suspense

Dove's (Personal) Review:  "Meg," short for Carcharodon Megalodan: a very large, dangerous, pissed off, hungry prehistoric shark! Jonas Taylor: a Paleo-biologist/Professor and deep-sea diver/Oceanographic explorer. In "Meg," book one of the Meg Trilogy, these two come face to face in a world seven miles below the ocean's surface.
     Jonas Taylor is hired as head of a Top-Secret, government-run ocean exploration mission. He's the pilot of the deep-sea submersible, used to reach depths of 38,000 feet.
     Masao Tanaka is also working with the government, in hopes of them funding his dream for the future. He wants to open the world's largest Whale Reserve/Whale Watching pool, where the general public can come to watch whales in their natural environment. He's the father of two, a son and a daughter. His son was killed during a deep-sea dive, and his daughter Terry longs to take over her brother's position as deep-sea diver for her father's project. Since his son was already killed, he feels this line of work is too dangerous for women, so he's totally against his daughter's wishes. Tanaka is also a friend of Jonas Taylor's from years past, and he invites Jonas to his house, to share his dream with him, and to ask advice.
     Since Terry is excluded from the project, she resents Jonas' affiliations with her father's dream. Jonas and Terry remain friendly to each other, but there's a deep-rooted animosity in Terry that she can't shake towards him.
     During a deep-sea dive for the government's top-secret project, Jonas encounters something ugly! He panics, and races the submersible to the surface. He's the only survivor, and lives - daily - with the ongoing guilt of killing his crew.
     Enter the Meg, a prehistoric shark from seventy million years ago: superior killing-machine, feared predator, top of the food chain, with a bad attitude, and an insatiable appetite for anything that moves. Jonas believes it was a Meg that scared him, and the quest begins to hunt it down, to prove to the world he's still a great scientist.
     An invigorating, exciting, full-of-suspense novel! Do you remember those feelings of fear you experienced after watching "JAWS?" How you hesitated at the shore, letting only your feet get wet, remembering a scene from the movie in your minds eye, before taking that initial dive into the surf? Steve Alten has reawakened those same fears in all of us with Meg! A superb thriller with many plot twists, quickening the reader's pulse with every page!
     TWO-THUMBS-UP!!! GOLD-STAR!!!