Indiana Jones and the Interior World

The sense I get when reading Indiana Jones and the Interior World is that Rob MacGregor had a grand sense of wrapping up his time on the Indy novels. Bits of former stories – like the alicorn of the previous novel, to a race of people who can mask themselves with different faces, a la what was happening in Indiana Jones and the Seven Veils – come together in a way that I feel might have been really satisfying to MacGregor but, in practice, I don’t think really work together. As an Indiana Jones novel, at least.

And it’s such a shame because this novel starts off strong. Indy is on Easter Island with other archaeologists but is singled out by the local museum curator, to meet with the Matuans – a secret society dedicated to maintaining the traditions of the island. They want Indy to view ancient Rongo-rongo tablets so he can decipher the Rongo-rongo language. This is great! This is really promising! Easter Island is a cool location… we have a secret society… what will happen next? Uh, not much, as it turns out. Marcus Brody wants Indy to come with him to the island of Chiloé to find his missing friend Hans Beitelheimer. OK, so we’ve parked the story that was set up, and we’re now leaving Easter Island.

On Chiloé we kick-start a new tale. A local restaurant owner tells Indy and Brody that Beitelheimer had formerly been there, under the name Juan Barrios. He had painted several weird-looking paintings, then had disappeared on the ghost ship Caleuche. Neat! Let’s go with this! And as a bonus, we also learn there are two people getting around who looked like Beitelheimer. What’s all that about? Mystery abounds! Indy and Brody go looking for the ghost ship. Maybe we can resolve that, then get Indy back to Easter Island? Uh… no. These two false starts are just there to get Indy into the main storyline.

And the frustrating thing about the main storyline is that while the building blocks of these first two storylines we were introduced to seemed quite grounded, the main storyline – dealing with the concept of a hollow earth with a race of people living inside it – flies off into super magical territory very fast.

Supernatural goings on were a hallmark of all MacGregor’s novels and I’m sympathetic to the idea that there’s a supernatural element in the Indiana Jones movies, so one should follow the other, right? Well… kinda. I can watch Raiders of the Lost Ark and marvel at the power of the Ark as it zaps all the Nazis and think it’s pretty cool. But in this novel, we have page after page after page of shape-shifting people who live beyond portals that you have to drink basically a magical potion to enter or exit… and that’s before we get to Indiana Jones and the dragon. Yep, not a typo. And Indiana Jones and the giant. Also not a typo. And Indiana Jones and the dinosaur. This novel’s got it all. And not in a good way, dear reader. Our beloved archaeologist is put in a variety of situations where it’s not so much you want to call BS on the whole thing as an imaginative concept, but as an Indiana Jones story, it just doesn’t feel right at all.

Which makes this a very hard novel to rate. MacGregor has put thought into this… his ideas are certainly Big Ones which an author should always strive for… and he’s tying together real world stuff – like the moai statues on Easter Island which you can go and visit – with utter pseudoscience nonsense that was debunked as far back as the 18th century, ie: the concept of a hollow earth with people in it.

This is also one of those novels where you’re literally 10 pages off finishing and the plot doesn’t seem to be anywhere near resolving, guaranteeing the resolution is going to be rushed. And it is. There’s a fight scene to dispatch the baddie of the piece, and then Marcus Brody gives Indy (who is gung-ho to tell a journalist that the hollow earth is real; does that sound at all like Indiana Jones?), a bunch of reasons why he might have thought he was in the hollow earth with a bunch of shape-shifting people, kings, dragons, dinosaurs, etc, but none of that was real and Indy was just too drugged up to notice the reality of his situation over the past few months. It’s neat to have a counterpoint, but it’s pretty unsatisfying.

So what do I do? It’s almost impossible to balance the story as both an imaginative piece of fiction and an Indiana Jones novel, as the former can do whatever it wants and not be “wrong” while the latter needs to feel right. And feel is a very subjective thing, I know. It’s why some people like the, “space between spaces” and the interdimensional beings in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, while others think that’s total cack. So, your mileage might vary on this one too… but I think it’s a 6/10.