This time, though, I don’t have to worry about the critics. So I won’t agonize about where to begin. I’m going to begin twenty-one years ago, in 1938, on 49th Street in Manhattan, with a bet. Madness is Better than Defeat by Ned BeaumanHave you ever wondered what would happen if you were lost out in the jungles of Honduras for over a decade and no one came looking for you? What kind of news would you miss? How would you survive? What kind of a civilization would you establish? Ned Beauman explores some of these questions, and more, in his novel Madness is Better than Defeat. Beauman’s novel begins with a CIA agent waiting for the results of a tribunal investigating what happened in Honduras about twenty years in the past. Our agent is given time to review all of the evidence so he can properly defend himself, and he begins writing a tell-all journal. He knows it is likely no one else will ever read this, yet he writes anyway. I don’t want to spoil much, but what unravels is an elaborate, multi-character narrative filled with adventure, action, drama, strange characters, black nail, and so much more. The gist of it is that two separate parties—a group sent to dismantle and bring a temple back to New York and a group tasked with filming a movie using the temple as a backdrop—arrive in the jungle just one day apart from each other. Since the groups have conflicting interests, tension arises and causes some seemingly unnecessary drama. Neither group is willing to give up the ground they have gained, so there they are at a standstill for quite some time, refusing to send anyone back to the United States because sending one person home may shift the balance of power. Eventually our narrator makes his way to the camp, which has quite an effect on the two groups, which are still divided after years of being in the jungle. One thing I really enjoyed about this novel was the way it was told in first person narration. This made me feel much closer to the situation as I felt immersed in the goings on in the jungle. I do want to offer a word of warning that there is some language in the book, but it did not detract from the story or from the overall value of the book. I still genuinely recommend this book if you like adventure stories, alternate history novels, or books that really investigate why people make the decisions they do. Here’s to finding a good book! *I received a review copy of this book from Penguin Random House in exchange for an honest review.
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