The Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston
$7.99
The Lost City of the Monkey God
- A True Story
- By: Douglas Preston
- Narrated by: Bill Mumy
- Length: 10 hrs and 29 mins
- Categories: History
About this listen
A 500-year-old legend. An ancient curse. A stunning medical mystery. And a pioneering journey into the unknown heart of the world's densest jungle.
Since the days of conquistador Hernán Cortés, rumors have circulated about a lost city of immense wealth hidden somewhere in the Honduran interior, called the White City or the Lost City of the Monkey God. Indigenous tribes speak of ancestors who fled there to escape the Spanish invaders, and they warn that anyone who enters this sacred city will fall ill and die. In 1940, swashbuckling journalist Theodore Morde returned from the rainforest with hundreds of artifacts and an electrifying story of having found the Lost City of the Monkey God - but then committed suicide without revealing its location.
Three quarters of a century later, best-selling author Doug Preston joined a team of scientists on a groundbreaking new quest. In 2012 he climbed aboard a rickety, single-engine plane carrying the machine that would change everything: lidar, a highly advanced, classified technology that could map the terrain under the densest rainforest canopy. In an unexplored valley ringed by steep mountains, that flight revealed the unmistakable image of a sprawling metropolis, tantalizing evidence of not just an undiscovered city but an enigmatic, lost civilization.
Venturing into this raw, treacherous, but breathtakingly beautiful wilderness to confirm the discovery, Preston and the team battled torrential rains, quickmud, disease-carrying insects, jaguars, and deadly snakes. But it wasn't until they returned that tragedy struck: Preston and others found they had contracted in the ruins a horrifying, sometimes lethal - and incurable - disease.
Suspenseful and shocking, filled with colorful history, hair-raising adventure, and dramatic twists of fortune, The Lost City of the Monkey God is the absolutely true, eyewitness account of one of the great discoveries of the 21st century.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
©2017 Douglas Preston (P)2017 Hachette Audio
JKC
Archaeology reduced to reality show
The story this book tells – about a high-tech search for pre-Columbian ruins in the Honduran jungle – is an interesting one. But the writing falls far below the high standard achieved by John Lloyd Stephens in his classic account of the exploration of Copan, and even below books in the second tier of this genre, like Hiram Bingham’s “Lost City of the Incas” or Sidney Kirkpatrick’s “Lords of Sipan”. Even the photos provided in the PDF file cannot hold a candle to Frederick Catherwood’s renderings of the Copan stelai.
There’s too much Discovery Channel-style exaggeration of the challenges to be overcome during the exploration stage, and not nearly enough information on what really matters, which are the ruins and artifacts. Too much focus on airborne technologies and not enough insight into a rediscovered culture. Even the title strains to oversell the subject matter.
One wishes that the book had been written by Chris Fisher, the archaeologist who accompanied the discovery team, rather than by Douglas Preston, a novelist most best known for his Pendergast mysteries. In fact, I recommend Fisher’s web site to readers who want to learn more about the real archaeology Mosquitia.
Bill Mumy’s narration is mediocre. I don’t mind his mis-pronunciation of Hispanic place- and surnames so much as his infomercial style, his Norman Vincent Peale tonality that reminds me of “Gold Rush” or “Alaskan Bush People” or other artificially dramatized reality programs on TV.
Rachel
Story–good. Narration–problematic
I’m enjoying the story. However, this is a book about Central America and is full of Spanish-language words, names, and places. Please for the love of god, Audible, get a narrator who can reasonably pronounce words in Spanish! Every time I hear this narrator mangle a Spanish word, it’s like nails on a chalk board. Is it too much to ask that someone pronounce things correctly? Has this narrator never heard a Spanish word? He doesn’t seem to make the slightest effort. Why aren’t narrators selected who can appropriately narrate a story that includes non-English words? If it were a word here and there it wouldn’t be a big deal, but in this particular book, it’s detracting from a great story, and furthermore, I find it disrespectful to the culture and country that is the focus of the book.