Indiana Jones and the Dance of the Giants

Indiana Jones and the Dance of the Giants picks up where Indiana Jones and the Peril at Delphi left off… in a manner of speaking. While Indiana Jones is still a much younger man than the adventurer we know from the original movie trilogy, and his adventure in Delphi is still front and centre with the MacGuffin of that story – the Omphalos – playing a big part in this story, several years have gone by, just the same.

Now a professor in his own right, this is a more confident Indy than in the previous book and, reading the text from here in 2024, I was taken aback with how happy he is to start a relationship with one of his students. On one hand, sure, we’re talking about a novel set 100 years ago and, “things were different then” and, to be fair, Indy does think about the ramifications for his career – but only because the girl in question is the daughter of his boss! On the other hand, this is Indiana Jones who, in Raiders of the Lost Ark, is faced with an attractive student with LOVE YOU written on her eyelids, and seems shocked and a little flustered by that kind of attention from a student. The two different Indy’s don’t quite gel for me.

All of that said, the girl in question – Deirdre Campbell – leaps right off the page. From her initial scenes in the story where she comes across like a total pain-in-the-arse know-it-all, to learning more about her and seeing her indecision and doubts, she’s more interesting than the kind of characters we normally get in genre film tie-in novels like this. It helps ground the story which I think is necessary when other aspects are approaching “jump the shark” territory and even have Indy questioning within the text how certain plot points are going to work in 20th century England. The story does fly quite close to the wind.

For every secret room being uncovered by an accidentally kicked stone or major strokes of luck saving the day (you know, typical Indiana Jones stuff), we also have the magical properties of the Omphalos from the last novel back in play; mass hypnotism of a crowd of people with no explanation at all – just a hand wave from the author; characters being killed in ways that would demand more investigation and response than they get; a cameo from a mythological character who makes a crack about a novel more than a decade off being written in this time period, and more. It’s slightly on the nose. Not always in a bad way, I might add, but I think this is the kind of novel you need to be in mood for, to really enjoy.

One aspect I did like was the Jack Shannon character carrying over from the previous novel. Although the author has had him show up unexpectedly and in quite flukeish ways in two novels now, he’s still a fine character on the page and fun to read. Meanwhile, a new character is introduced – Leeland Milford – who is a friend of Henry Jones Sr. and seems to be suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, or something very much like it. Although the, “I had something to tell you… no, I’ve forgotten it…” routine gets a little old across the story, he still comes across as a likeable old scholar and his scenes were very good, too.

The villain of the piece, Adrian Powell, has a lot of ideas thrown at him… he’s an MP… there are blink-and-you’ll-miss-them suggestions he’s a fascist… he owns a pet shop… he’s related to someone important in the story… he basically has magical powers because of his association with a certain group… but none of it’s really fleshed out. While he’s more than a bad guy who rolls on from stage left, rubbing his hands together while snickering, “Mwahahaha…” there’s not a lot going on. He just wants to mass hypnotise thousands of people, commit an evil act… and then what? Can he stop the British Commonwealth from being created (which seems to be his biggest fantasy)? There are shades of the Doctor Who story, The Kings Demons here, where the baddie in that story wants to stop Magna Carta from happening in England and you think, OK, even if he succeeds… then what? There are some big ideas attached to Powell, but I don’t know where they really go, when taken to their logical conclusion.

Something I thought about after I finished the novel is that it takes place in England and Scotland… and that’s it. We’re so used to Indy flying off to exotic locations in the films and, even in the first novel, we saw him studying in France and heading off to Greece for his adventure. But here, keeping the action within the UK, it gives us a different sort of background for the character to be set against. I seem to recall one of the 1980s Indiana Jones comics being set in the UK – and utilising Stonehenge, just like this story – but it’s very much the exception, rather than the rule, when it comes to Indiana Jones.

Although Indiana Jones and the Dance of the Giants grabbed me faster and more solidly than Indiana Jones and the Peril at Delphi did when I compare the first quarter, or so, of each book (which had me really excited, as I plowed through the early chapters thinking I’d hit a really good novel), I think it settles into fairly similar territory to the first book the longer it goes on. As such, I feel comfortable giving it a 7/10 as well, but would call it the better of these 7/10 efforts by Rob MacGregor, if that makes sense?