Spoilers!
The tree of life and death, as it were, yin and yang, cure and curse. That’s the harrowing, disturbing, and miraculous story James Rollins weaves like roots in his 2002 novel, Amazonia. Western medicine, Western ideas, and Western people are no match for the mysteries that light under the canopy of the Amazon. Nor are readers a match for Rollins’ unyielding penchant for putting characters we come to love in great peril again and again.
In Amazonia, a former Special Forces soldier, Agent Gerald Clark, emerges from the depths of the Amazon. This isn’t merely surprising because his expedition disappeared four years previously, but also because the soldier has a rengerated arm. He soon dies and it seems he brought disease with him, as a pandemic unfurls across the Americas, targeting children and the elderly. There is no known cure. They aren’t even sure what the disease or its machinations are!
Nate Rand, the son of Carl Rand, who was the head of the aforementioned expedition, is still working with Amazonian tribes, like the Yanomamo (a real tribe), and in his free time, rescuing children from gigantic caimans (similar in family to the alligator). He’s brave, fearless, and hellbent on finding out what the heck happened to his father. So, he happily links up with the CIA when they plan a new expedition into the Amazon to find out what happened to the Special Forces soldier and how his arm regenerated, and for Nate. Along with members of the CIA, including Frank and Kelly, children of two CIA agents who work on environmental issues and at least 12 Army Rangers, Nate is also joined by Zane, the pharmaceutical lead involved in the first expedition, Manny, a Brazilian local and his jaguar, Tor-tor, and a local shaman, Professor Kouwe (who I had to scoff at when Nate says the professor knows 150-some Amazonian dialects).
They all head into the jungle, assuming they can eventually find the path the Clark took. Meanwhile, even Kelly’s daughter, Jessica, now has the plague, so, it’s become personal to find a cure. While making their trek, they learn of a sort of “thou-shall-not-be-named” tribe that’s whispered among the other tribes. They are the Ban-ali tribe, or the Blood Jaguars (a fictional tribe). I thought it was interesting the “good” group had a jaguar in tow, Tor-tor, and were being accosted by a tribe known as the Blood Jaguars. The Ban-ali tribe is feared because they seem to bring forth the power of the jungle to defeat their enemies and ward them off. As alluded to, this is precisely what happens to Nate’s expeditionary team. Over the course of the book, they encounter monstrous caimans (many times larger than the one Nate initially wrestled with), piranha-frog hybrids who literally leap out of the water to poisonously and viciously bite, the aerial bombardment of millions of locust, and of course, giant-sized black jaguars. In short order, eight of the Army Rangers are dead, with more to follow. In all, 10 of the 12 Army Rangers won’t make it back out of the jungle.
If that wasn’t bad enough, the expeditionary team is being hunted by a different monstrous force: greedy humans led by a Frenchman named Dr. Favre and his Indian bride, the murderous Tshui, who is an expert in the practice of shrinking the skulls of her victims (in one of the more horrific scenes, she kills an Army Ranger, shrinks his skull, and wears it around her neck when she parades in front of the two remaining Army Rangers later). Dr. Favre is after the cure, too, in the hopes of securing billions of dollars for a French pharmaceutical company, which means millions of dollars for him. He has about 40 mercenaries with him. If that wasn’t bad enough, Rollins also lets the reader know that Favre has a spy on the inside of Nate’s team. Rollins includes a computer/GPS whiz on Nate’s team who is a former KGB agent as a red herring, but it turns out to be Zane, the American pharmaceutical greedy bastard.
Throughout the ordeals with creatures and humans alike, the Army Rangers and Nate are daring and ingenious in how they continue to survive and forge ahead to find the Ban-ali village in the hopes of unlocking the secret to a cure. Along the way, one of those jaguars also literally swipes with its massive clawed paw Frank’s legs away. You know where that’s going! Frank is going to be a guinea pig to see if his legs regenerate (spoiler alert: they do!).
So, what’s the secret? The Ban-ali tribe worship a tree as its Mother, like many myths and religious tales. This tree seems almost prehistoric, even perhaps having been the “common ancestor,” if you will, to enabling the human species’ intelligence. The Ban-ali’s centuries of interaction with it are almost engendering a spin-off species to Homo sapiens. But I’m getting ahead of myself. The disease plaguing the Americas is similar in nature to mad cow disease, and it’s the tree’s nut milk that holds both the cure and the curse. Venture away from the tree, as Clark did, and his body was ravaged with cancerous tumors and he spread the deadly disease (also, mating with a Ban-ali woman to produce an offspring produced a monster, like if you mixed species!). Stay near the tree, like slaves as the Ban-ali have, and they will be an elevated Amazonian tribe with access to the healing properties of the tree’s nut milk and sap. Underneath the tree in its labyrinth-like root system are all manner of species, so the tree can understand the myriad prion makeups of those species to engender a similar symbiotic relationship. This is where Nate finds his dad still alive. It is that milk that supercharges evolution and the prions and enables regeneration and fast-healing. Or again, degenerative disease.
Nate and his clan are able to overcome the beasts and Louis and his mercenaries — not before Louis seems to have the upperhand by virtually raiding the village and its inhabitants to the ground and successfully blowing up the miraculous (and malignant) tree, as well as sadly chopping off Mandy’s head — thanks to Tor-tor and his lady Jaguar friend (hehe), who help untie Nate and his team and allow them to escape through the tree’s labyrinth before it explodes. By the way, during all of this, Nate and Kelly’s fondness blossoms into passionate love-making, which later produces a child at the end of the book, which was also only made possible due to the nut milk keeping Kelly alive.
What a fun story! It’s fun to have these high-minded things to think about and want to Google later, like the Amazon, tribes, prions, tree myths, plagues, and so forth, while also enjoying the high-octane action and that edge-of-your-seat suspense of wondering what will happen next and how the heck Nate and his team will get out of it. Nate is one of my favorite characters in a book I’ve read this year. He’s simply fearless and smart. It’s thanks to him, even beyond the Army Rangers, that their mission succeeds, notwithstanding all the blood spilled.
It’s been a while since I’ve read a James Rollins book. I read quite a few of his Sigma Force books in my late teens and early 20s and enjoyed those mightily. I missed this kind of book, however you might describe it, conspiracy fiction? I put it in the same wheelhouse as Dan Brown’s books and Steve Berry’s, two other authors I love. But if you’re looking for a gentle (heh, not quite so gentle) introduction into Rollins’ work, a standalone book like Amazonia is a great place to start.
Milam's Musings 