nothing deep, but it is a fun quick read

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	• Mammoth John Varley, 2005 - 368 pages average customer review:based on 52 reviews view larger image
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Good near-future tale

Varley is one of the finest writers of tight, well-developed prose working today (just see the cover blurb from Tom Clancy), yet he doesn't get the credit he deserves because he writes in the "ghetto" of science fiction. Mammoth is about more than the obvious cover art would imply: Imagine one of the richest men in the world funding a project to find well-preserved mammoth remains, only to discover that almost perfect set of remains encased in ice. But next to it are the ancient remains of a man ... wearing a wristwatch.

Michael Crichton would have been happy to just have the mammoth story line. Varley isn't, and takes it several intruiging steps beyond what a "mainstream" writer would have attempted.

The pacing of this tale is tight. And the ending, which I thought had been telegraphed fifty pages before the book wrapped up, is much different than I expected.

Varley continues to be a writer of solid, thoughtful page-turners with a near-future flavor.

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Pulled Together Very Well

I have to say that I really enjoyed this book. I've been a Varley fan since the 80's and only have felt that Golden Globe didn't deliver. This was a very satisfying novel. I especially liked the way things evolved toward the ending and was pleasantly surprised how the last 20-30 pages became real "what happens next" page turners. Please don't read any summaries of the story, just start on page one and read it through to the end without any book critic's review spoiling the story-line for you.

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nothing deep, but it is a fun quick read

Mammoth by John Varley tells the story of a multibillionaire who has interesting hobbies. One day he decides he would like to bring mammoths back into the world. Teams are sent to the Arctic to find mammoth carcasses frozen into the ice, with the idea of recovering good enough genetic material that a mammoth or mammoth/elephant hybrid embryo can be implanted into an elephant womb and be brought to term. But one of the teams finds a mammoth frozen with two humans - and one of the humans is wearing a wrist watch and they have a briefcase...the billionaire will have his hobby and then some...while I normally do not enjoy time travel books very much, this one was actually a lot of fun!!

Besides the rich man, the book also centers around a veteranarian/elephant trainer, a mathmatician who tries to figure out the time travel machine, and a cute baby mammoth named Fuzzy (whose story arc pulls the whole novel together).

Nothing particularly deep, but I thought it was a quick and fun read. And as I read it, I kept thinking about what a cool movie it would be.

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This Mammoth is a Little Shaggy

Although an enjoyable 'pot-boiler'-type adventure story, this novel is not really up to Varley's standards. The characters are too extraordinary: the world's richest man, the world's most beautiful actress, the world's best mathematician and a circus performer who also happens to be the leading expert on elephants. The concept of time travel is not fully worked out: the paradoxes are left unexplored, the mechanism is left unexplained, and the chunk of earth sent time-traveling changes size with each occurrence. The plot has some pleasant twists but also a fair amount of gaping holes (which I won't describe -- those who have already read it will know what they are).

In short, I enjoyed the journey but there were a few too many places along the trail where the reader's attention is drawn away from the story being told. Because this is John Varley, I expected a bit more.

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Not great, but entertaining

"Mammoth" reminded me a little too much of "Timeline" and "Jurassic Park" in places, but it was an enjoyable read nevertheless: perfect for a rainy day!

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

An intact wooly mammoth is discovered frozen in Canada. Huddled next to the huge creature is the mummified body of a Stone Age man around 12,000 years old. And he is wearing a wristwatch.

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