Steve Alten’s “Vostok”
This week I blasted through Steve Alten’s new thriller, Vostok. I am a huge fan of Alten’s marine thrillers, with The Loch perhaps being my favorite book in the entire thriller genre; Vostok is a crossover work that combines characters from The Loch and his megaladon-based Meg series. Needless to say, I had very high hopes for this book. What I got was… interesting, to say the least. The plot follows Zachary Wallace, renown marine biologist and solver of the Loch mystery, as he is recruited on his most dangerous expedition yet: leading a three-man team into the subglacial Lake Vostok, a gargantuan six thousand square mile liquid lake buried two miles under Antarctic ice. When a rift opens up in the Antarctic shelf, fossilized Mesozoic organisms are pushed to the surface. The international scientific community, as expected, jumps on the discovery, with nations fronting scores of research teams to the area. After a fair bit of coercion, Zachary finds himself among the lucky few that will plunge into a massive pitch-black lake in search of any basic life that can be found. Expeditions in the thriller genre rarely go as planned, as soon Zachary and his team are fighting for their lives against the very environment… as well as whatever else may be inhabiting the lake.
The setup to Vostok is about what you would expect from Alten: hyper attention to scientific detail, with an extra helping of cool gadgets for our hero to use. The first half of this book is a foreboding marine thriller than specializes in claustrophobia. The second half is something else entirely. I’m not joking, the second half is almost a completely different genre. I don’t want to give any spoilers, but suspension of disbelief is a must. The change in tone is fairly jarring, and I want to say it detracted from the novel in a big way. I want to, but I can’t. I was hooked on this book from start to finish. Don’t get me wrong, I expect Alten to catch a lot of flak for what he pulls, but frankly I thought the way he handled the material of the second half was done well. My advice would be to go into this book expecting a general thriller. Have no preconceived notions about Alten’s other work whatsoever. Frankly, I hope he takes his ideas presented in the second half and makes a separate series out of them. The pacing of the book will have you turning pages frantically to se what happens next, be it in a scene of mystery or action. The writing throughout is top-notch (as far as thrillers go), and the cast of characters, while occasionally archetypal, are fun and memorable, especially if you have read The Loch.
Ultimately, I’m not quite sure what to make of Vostok. On the one hand, I loved the book and want to see Alten branch out more with his attempts at another genre. On the other hand, I feel like he really needs to do so with an entirely new literary universe, as opposed to using established characters to do so: it is more than a little weird how much the tone shifts in such a short amount of time. That being said, Vostok was a fun, trippy ride that didn’t disappoint. If you want a Grade-A, straight-up marine thriller/mystery, then check out The Loch; it is the technically superior Zachary Wallace novel by far. But if you want an interesting genre-bender that will definitely have you asking questions throughout the read, then Vostok is a blast of a book you need to check out.
