Amazonia (Hardcover)

When an unknown white man stumbles out of the jungle, a padré insists on helping him against the advice of the local shaman, who insists that the man's body must be burned immediately upon his death. The shaman says that the man bears the mark that he is a slave of the Ban-Ali tribe, and that none must help the Ban-Ali. The padre discovers some identifying information in the man's pocket, and arranges to notify the United States, who collects the body (since it turns out the man is a former government agent, missing for several years). It turns out this man has re-grown a missing arm, complete with correct fingerprints. When the body is shipped back to the United States, it leaves a trail of destruction wherever it passed, as the new pathogen is transmissible by air.

The U.S. government wants to investigate how the regeneration was possible, and to retrace the missing man's movements, when he went into the Amazon as part of a scientific team. Meanwhile, a French pharmaceutical company hires spies to follow the team into the Amazon, and steal whatever the American team can find.

In the jungle, they encounter terrifying creatures sent by the Ben-Ali. Eventually, some of them arrive in the Ban-Ali homeland area, in which numerous species thought to be extinct are existing. They find some amazing things upon arrival in the Ban-Ali homeland, including solving the mystery of what happened to the former expedition, which had vanished without a trace.

This is a great thriller that is hard to put down. I thought the characters were great, and I really liked all of the main characters. (People do die horrific deaths along the way, but not the characters you like most.) The book is full of so many interesting places, people, and ideas. Some of the ideas have to do with evolution, prion diseases, the origin of humans as a species, and just plain good adventure (with a satisfying romance toward the end)! The book reminded me a bit of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's, The Lost World. Furthermore, the ending is EXTREMELY satisfying.

Amazonia is the second book I've read by James Rollins--Sandstorm, a later book, being the first. I think Rollins gets better with every book, and had I not read Sandstorm first, I would have given Amazonia five stars. So the four stars is only by comparison to Sandstorm, which is even better!

If you are a fan of action novels with a hint of sci-fi this could be the best book you have read in the past few years. The plot is good and after the first couple of chapters the pace hots up. The story soon becomes "unputerdownable" long periods of breath holding are required while reading. The last couple of chapters get a bit sci-fi I admit, but there is nothing way out. I have lent my copy to several friends most of who have read the book in one session, its that kind of story. For me this is a five star book.