January Read/Patti

Title: Excavation

Author: Rollins, James

The story is fiction. It is an adventure/fantasy story. It is long.

     Professor Henry Collins is an archaeologist who has brought back to the United States a mummy that he unearthed in the Andean South American mountains of Peru.  While inspecting it, the skull exploded and was filled with a golden type liquid that has weird properties.

    At the same time as this is going on, Professor Collins has a group of young archaeologists who are on a dig in these Andean mountains to continue excavating a newly found ancient Indian city, hidden in the jungle terrain. It has an underground part.

    There is a long held rumor that there may be hidden there a king's treasure and something that will give great power.

    The young people are sabotaged by members of the Catholic church who were originally of a supposedly disbanded group of the ancient Inquisitors.  They sabotage the site and leave the young people stranded in  the underground part of the city.  

     They do find the treasure, but can't touch it as it has a lot of booby trap protections. They go through all sorts of booby trapped situations and terrible conditions as well as being attacked by weird monster type beings.  They of course manage to escape out into a valley that is peopled by Indians who never age and have lived many lifetimes.  The church people somehow get to the valley too and kill the Indians including their king.

    The young people have a miraculous rescue by the professor.  The artifact that is found is something that can cause horrible things. it is somehow destroyed and the terrible villains. The good people live happily ever after in this fantasy.  I did enjoy it even though it was terribly unrealistic.  Rollins books are this sort of high adventure matched with a fantasy element. One of his books in a very long while is ok.