On all fours, inching through a cascade of blood, he began crawling back toward the stomach.
Meg, by Steve Alten:
Jonas adjusted his midwing, decreasing his angle of descent. He hovered twenty feet above the seabed and slowed, waiting for D.J. Spread out below him were row upon row of giant clams, pure white and glowing, each over a foot in diameter. There were thousands of them, lying in formation around the [geothermal] vents as if worshipping their god.
Synopsis: Men swear at a giant prehistoric shark, who eats them with a merry chomp. Then the author realizes he can't let the shark win, and the hero gets to bunny-hop his tiny submersible across the surface of the Pacific.
So the hero: Jonas, as in he who got swallowed by the whale. This will be important later. For now just know that he's a sensitive, tortured deep-sea submersible pilot with claustrophobia. He's summoned by an old friend to come drive a submersible, despite the fact that the old friend has a son and a daughter who can both pilot submersibles, because California, apparently. Despite the fact that a) the daughter rilly rilly wants to pilot the submersible and Jonas rilly rilly doesn't (see above: claustrophobia), he agrees to do it anyway, after warning everyone about the possibility of giant MEGASHARK.
On the dive, the old friend's son is killed by oh, I don't know, a giant MEGASHARK, then Jonas returns to the surface and everyone blames him for the boy's death. The daughter expresses her grief by falling in love with Jonas. Meanwhile, a cadre of bitter old ex-Navy dudes forms, all BOO MEGASHARKS. DOWN WITH MEGASHARKS.
A fight breaks out over whether to nuke the MEGASHARK from space or try to capture it in a lagoon. The lagoon wins and the bitter old ex-Navy dudes take off in a huff, determined to capture and blow up the MEGASHARK themselves.
Note: they are terrible at this.
In fact, everyone is terrible at capturing the MEGASHARK, except Jonas' wife, who is sleeping with his millionaire best friend (because California) and is determined to get excellent film footage of the MEGASHARK. She kills an endangered whale as bait, hops in the water in a plexiglass bubble and gets excellent film footage of the MEGASHARK chomping her in half before swimming merrily away. As a result, the millionaire best friend joins up with Team Bitter Ex-Navy Shark-haters.
This book gives good MEGASHARK, I'll give it that. The shark gets to do a lot of swimming around eating things and escaping. In fact, Team Bitter Ex-Navy Shark-haters manage to blow themselves up while the shark swims by unmolested. News teams try to catch her. Foreign governments try to catch her. Illegal Japanese whaling boats try to catch her (and she eats them).
Now, let's take it to the breakdown:
Never gonna get it never gonna get it
Never gonna get never get it--
Except Jonas does wind up getting it. He teams up with an old Navy buddy he spent time with in a psychiatric hospital who does things like fly his helicopter into boats and come out with gems like:
"I'll be at the tavern getting shit-faced. Find me when you're done playing. If I'm with a woman, wait ten minutes. If she's ugly, wait five."
Anyway, Jonas winds up piloting his submersible directly into the MEGASHARK's mouth, because he's Jonas, and whale (or in this case shark). He climbs out of the submersible and stands balls-deep in MEGASHARK stomach acid, which strangely does not affect him, then he takes out his trusty diving talisman, a MEGASHARK TOOTH, and saws his way through the stomach lining into the shark's heart and because the arteries are too tough to saw through with the tooth, he rips the shark's heart apart with his bare hands, which is genteelly depicted as follows:
In total darkness, Jonas lay on his back, covered in warm blood that continued cascading down upon him in buckets. On his heaving chest, like an enormous tree trunk, lay the detached heart of the 42,000-pound Megalodon ...His fingers felt something hard, yes, the light. He wiped the lens but the beam was barely perceptible. On all fours, inching through a cascade of blood, he began crawling back toward the stomach.
Basically, what with all the heaving chests, scheming wives, pliant daughters of old family friends, yachts and explosions, this book is basically a Jackie Collins novel for dudes. It's about men who just want to bone Mother Nature and aren't afraid to die trying, or try dying. Or bad flying and fish-heart frying.
Whatever. Good marine science, though.
Maybe next time
You'll give your woman a little respect
Then you won't be hearing her say AAAAAAAAA I'M BEING EATEN BY A MEGASHARK AAAAAAAAA
*Ahem*.
Jonas adjusted his midwing, decreasing his angle of descent. He hovered twenty feet above the seabed and slowed, waiting for D.J. Spread out below him were row upon row of giant clams, pure white and glowing, each over a foot in diameter. There were thousands of them, lying in formation around the [geothermal] vents as if worshipping their god.
Synopsis: Men swear at a giant prehistoric shark, who eats them with a merry chomp. Then the author realizes he can't let the shark win, and the hero gets to bunny-hop his tiny submersible across the surface of the Pacific.
So the hero: Jonas, as in he who got swallowed by the whale. This will be important later. For now just know that he's a sensitive, tortured deep-sea submersible pilot with claustrophobia. He's summoned by an old friend to come drive a submersible, despite the fact that the old friend has a son and a daughter who can both pilot submersibles, because California, apparently. Despite the fact that a) the daughter rilly rilly wants to pilot the submersible and Jonas rilly rilly doesn't (see above: claustrophobia), he agrees to do it anyway, after warning everyone about the possibility of giant MEGASHARK.
On the dive, the old friend's son is killed by oh, I don't know, a giant MEGASHARK, then Jonas returns to the surface and everyone blames him for the boy's death. The daughter expresses her grief by falling in love with Jonas. Meanwhile, a cadre of bitter old ex-Navy dudes forms, all BOO MEGASHARKS. DOWN WITH MEGASHARKS.
A fight breaks out over whether to nuke the MEGASHARK from space or try to capture it in a lagoon. The lagoon wins and the bitter old ex-Navy dudes take off in a huff, determined to capture and blow up the MEGASHARK themselves.
Note: they are terrible at this.
In fact, everyone is terrible at capturing the MEGASHARK, except Jonas' wife, who is sleeping with his millionaire best friend (because California) and is determined to get excellent film footage of the MEGASHARK. She kills an endangered whale as bait, hops in the water in a plexiglass bubble and gets excellent film footage of the MEGASHARK chomping her in half before swimming merrily away. As a result, the millionaire best friend joins up with Team Bitter Ex-Navy Shark-haters.
This book gives good MEGASHARK, I'll give it that. The shark gets to do a lot of swimming around eating things and escaping. In fact, Team Bitter Ex-Navy Shark-haters manage to blow themselves up while the shark swims by unmolested. News teams try to catch her. Foreign governments try to catch her. Illegal Japanese whaling boats try to catch her (and she eats them).
Now, let's take it to the breakdown:
Never gonna get it never gonna get it
Never gonna get never get it--
Except Jonas does wind up getting it. He teams up with an old Navy buddy he spent time with in a psychiatric hospital who does things like fly his helicopter into boats and come out with gems like:
"I'll be at the tavern getting shit-faced. Find me when you're done playing. If I'm with a woman, wait ten minutes. If she's ugly, wait five."
Anyway, Jonas winds up piloting his submersible directly into the MEGASHARK's mouth, because he's Jonas, and whale (or in this case shark). He climbs out of the submersible and stands balls-deep in MEGASHARK stomach acid, which strangely does not affect him, then he takes out his trusty diving talisman, a MEGASHARK TOOTH, and saws his way through the stomach lining into the shark's heart and because the arteries are too tough to saw through with the tooth, he rips the shark's heart apart with his bare hands, which is genteelly depicted as follows:
In total darkness, Jonas lay on his back, covered in warm blood that continued cascading down upon him in buckets. On his heaving chest, like an enormous tree trunk, lay the detached heart of the 42,000-pound Megalodon ...His fingers felt something hard, yes, the light. He wiped the lens but the beam was barely perceptible. On all fours, inching through a cascade of blood, he began crawling back toward the stomach.
Basically, what with all the heaving chests, scheming wives, pliant daughters of old family friends, yachts and explosions, this book is basically a Jackie Collins novel for dudes. It's about men who just want to bone Mother Nature and aren't afraid to die trying, or try dying. Or bad flying and fish-heart frying.
Whatever. Good marine science, though.
Maybe next time
You'll give your woman a little respect
Then you won't be hearing her say AAAAAAAAA I'M BEING EATEN BY A MEGASHARK AAAAAAAAA
*Ahem*.