Reviews tagging 'Colonisation'

The Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston

8 reviews

technically_direct's review against another edition

adventurous funny tense fast-paced

3.75

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Body horror, Genocide, Blood, Medical content, Colonisation, Injury/Injury detail, and Pandemic/Epidemic

otterparty's review

adventurous dark hopeful informative lighthearted mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

3.5

The most interesting part for me is the tension in the field of archaeology between "true" field work, unspoiled by press, and field work that courts press to try and save the ruins (and ostensibly make money by selling books to the public). This tension permeates the expedition itself as well as reactions to this book. It would be fascinating to dig deeper into the moral conundrums here: don't bring along writers and filmmakers to drum up awareness and enthusiasm, and risk losing the site to looters or deforestation? Or leave the writers/filmmakers/adventure seekers out and don't write the popular articles, preserving utmost archaeological integrity but risking the destruction of the site in the process?

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Medical content, Medical trauma, Colonisation, Injury/Injury detail, and Pandemic/Epidemic

Moderate: Genocide

Minor: Rape

taylorlanxon's review

adventurous challenging hopeful informative medium-paced

4.25

---

Content Warnings

Moderate: Chronic illness, Death, Genocide, Rape, Religious bigotry, Colonisation, Classism, and Pandemic/Epidemic

meganpbennett's review against another edition

adventurous informative mysterious medium-paced

4.0

Chosen as the next read for an online book discussion that I only sort of take part in, The Lost City of the Monkey God was an interesting read. it went into great detail of how the city was found - lidar - and even more detail about disease the explorers brought back with them. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Body horror, Genocide, Blood, Medical content, and Colonisation

beehives's review against another edition

adventurous

Like "The Lost City of Z" but worse. IMO, most interesting part was the infectious diseases section. I would've liked more content around the LIDAR detection as well, since that kicked off the field research. The author's response to critique of the expedition at best maligned one specific guy (fun to read and probably not a wrong assessment of this dude) and at worst failed to address real concerns about neocolonialism & sensationalism in archeology and in this specific discovery.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Medical content and Colonisation

nquinlan's review against another edition

adventurous informative mysterious medium-paced

2.0

Interesting subject matter, but at times I found myself wondering why certain content was in there. There were some tangents that didn’t seem to make a ton of sense, and the author engaged in a fair deal of score settling

For all the talk of the controversy of the expedition, “and reasonable points made,” the author didn’t seem to grok the points or at least react by changing their language. 

I preferred Chasing the Thrill as an author centric treasure hunt.

---

Content Warnings

Moderate: Chronic illness, Genocide, and Colonisation

Minor: Rape

mzynda's review

adventurous challenging informative reflective medium-paced

4.25

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Genocide, Slavery, Violence, Colonisation, and Injury/Injury detail

mirificmoxie's review against another edition

adventurous challenging informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

---

Content Warnings

Moderate: Medical content and Colonisation