LITERAL REMAINS

Oh, brother, here we go again. At least that’s what I thought when I first read the back jacket of this Cortes’s debut novel. Set in the near future, Earth is plagued with crises: ecological, geographical, and political. A world in turmoil. But this circle under the jungle could mean opportunity knocking. Unbeknownst to IMC, they are being spied on by Pygmies. Yeah, that’s right, Pygmies. The Pygmies are part of a mystical society that protects the secret under the Congo, and they have something to do with protecting the knowledge of the universe.

It gets a little weird.

There are echoes of Michael Crichton’s Sphere (and Congo and The Andromeda Strain) and Lincoln Child’s Deep Storm in Perfect Circle. But, I admit, it was not exactly what I was expecting. Like I said, it gets a little weird. There are some good plot turns, and the more outrageous story strains of mysticism are woven into the science fiction tale in a deft manner.

This is an interesting story, but it gets bogged down in the telling. Several, several, times I checked to see how far from the end I was; not in a gasp to postpone it, but in a “gee, lets get on with it, already” kind of way. It gets weird, and a little boring. Having read it, I wished the beginning and middle parts had been shortened, and the ending had been expanded. The end was much more interesting than the preceding events.

3 out of 5

the_novacula