When I go on trips, I usualyl download a couple of books onto the Palm so I can read without lugging a book around. Typically these books are pulp adventure or sci fi - not something I would normally buy in book form, but which the low cost of e-books makes worthwhile. The last purchase was the Rule of Four posted below, which I enjoyed very much, and Raising Atlantis, which I didn't.
raising Atlantis is your basic pulp adventure story - not unlike a Clive Cussler book. And it is actually better written than a Cussler book - the testotesrone level is lower and the characters are actually pretty well drawn. The problem is that the plot is way too thin to support what he's doing. The book is something about a city under the Antarctic ice which is supposed to have been Atlantis, but everything happens so fast that it's hard to take seriously. They're running around this alien city (which Clarke did far better in Rendezvous With Rama) figuring out all these alien puzzles so fast - and without any error - that you just stop identifying with them. No mistakes for this crowd - they instantly know the correct answer to questions I can't even comprehend. You could buy that Dan Brown's heroes could - just barely - figure out clues that medieval minds directed straight at them. Here we have essentially aliens from the thousand years ago, and theses guys are nailing every question, even - when the need arises - coming up with the precise date and hour of Christ's crucifixion (contradicting many historical bases) when they speculate that that's the answer to a ten thousand year old puzzle. What?
Not bad characters at all, again. But they deserve better than this plot. So do I - I need to find some better pulp fiction than this. Maybe Clive Cussler has something new out...