The Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story by Douglas PrestonMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
There are some fantastic tangential chapters early on, where Preston's background research reveals some ripping yarns of treasure hunters, banana moguls, drug lords and secret agent subterfuge. When he gets to the jungle himself, it feels straight out of an Indiana Jones movie, with gigantic snakes, bug swarms, mud slides, and tough as nails army jungle guides.
The book really fell down for me in the back half, though. Preston and the rest of the crew leave the jungle surprisingly early, to return to America and send a whole lot of emails to each other about their bug bites. They do indeed have the "horrifying, sometimes lethal-and incurable-disease" that the jacket hypes, and all my sympathies to them, but it felt like epilogue material had been stretched out into "Part Two: Bureaucracy".
My suggestion: start this book, but don't bother finishing it!
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