9: Excavation by James Rollins

Last summer I discovered James Rollins. Fell madly in love with his books, which reminded me so much of a cross between Michael Crichton and Dan Brown. But the first books I read by him were from the Sigma Force series. Lately I've been reading his older books. And boy oh boy do they follow a formula:

• Archaeological team/scientific team/military team sent off to remote region to discover/investigate something.
• Unknown to them, there is a team of bad guys who are after the same information.
• Doubly unknown to them, the bad guys have paid off a member of their team.
• Triply unknown, there is some scary element of surprise awaiting them in the remote area (usually weird, albino, monster creatures).
• They become trapped. Usually underground.
• The bad guys are waiting for them above ground.
• The monsters are closing in on them underground.
• Someone dies, and is resurrected.
  
• Cheesy love story. With gross/unrealistic smoochy bits near end.
• Bad guys ALL die.
• Good guys lose one (usually heroic military type) guy and everyone else lives happily ever after.

Change the scenery around and everyone's hair/eye colour/and accent and you have a new book.

The stories themselves are interesting, if only they weren't so predictable.