Indiana Jones and the Hollow Earth

If the title of this novel makes you think, hang on, haven’t we done this topic before? We have. Last year I wrote about Indiana Jones and the Interior World, where we had the concept of a hollow earth with a race of people living inside it. Page after page of shape-shifting people who live beyond portals that you have to drink a magical potion to enter or exit… and a dragon… and a giant… and a dinosaur. Yeah.

That book ended with Indy completely gung-ho to tell a journalist all about the hollow earth, so when he encounters the idea again in this book, the silence from the character is deafening. And reminds me of a more general comment I made when reviewing, Indiana Jones and the Philosopher’s Stone that there seemed to be a real lack of care in the editorial process for these books. Which extended, it seems, to the range editors not even pulling up the author and saying, hey mate, we’ve done that topic already.

Now, all of that said, is Max McCoy a better Indiana Jones author than Martin ‘I love planes!’ Caidin or even Rob MacGregor? For mine, yes, he is. And is McCoy’s conceptualisation of ‘the hollow earth’ much better in this novel than the one in Interior World? Yes, it is. So I don’t want this review to get off on the wrong foot by saying any of this stuff upfront. This is a good book, with an imaginative theme, and it’s really well done. It’s just a shame the theme had already been done just five novels ago in the range.

Plot-wise, this is a winner. McCoy manages to pull out a different piece to both Philosopher’s Stone (fascists, Italy), and Indiana Jones and the Dinosaur Eggs (warlords, China), and delivers Nazis on US soil, a wonderfully scenery-chewing Rene Belloq sequence in New Orleans, and some adventuring in the arctic circle. Readers still suffering PTSD from Martin Caidin’s obsession with adding as much aviation as possible to Indiana Jones novels may get some cold shakes when the story heads to the arctic – and not because of the weather. Joking aside, McCoy continues to prove why he’s the best Indy author.

A real stand out character in this novel is Ulla Tornaes – a Danish explorer who rescues Indy in the Guadalupe Mountains on the New Mexico-Texas border. She then accompanies him to the Arctic – via meeting Belloq in New Orleans – in his ongoing quest in the McCoy novels to recover the Crystal Skull of Cozan. As a tough, resourceful female adventurer (with no interest in men, it should be added), she provides a new kind of female companion for Indy, and the book’s all the more refreshing for it.

When I mentioned Interior World earlier, I also touched on its sheer weirdness in many places. It gets so outlandish that, near the end, Marcus Brody has to give Indy a list of possible explanations for the things he’s seen – shape-shifters, kings, dragons, dinosaurs – only to conclude that Indy was mostly just on drugs. By contrast, Hollow Earth ventures into the mystical once Indy and his team reach the hollow earth, but it never gets that bizarre. I appreciated the restraint. We expect some wild, supernatural elements in an Indiana Jones story – and we do get them here, make no mistake – but it cannot be overstated how, in contrast, Interior World seriously over-egged the pudding on the same topic.

The biggest takeaway here is if you want to read one Indy novel about our hero adventuring into a world beneath our own, read Hollow Earth over Interior World. Another 8/10 effort from McCoy!