Review 446: The Lost City of the Monkey God

The Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story by Douglas Preston
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a non-fiction book, and you can tell because the subtitle says “A True Story”. Really, have to laugh at books that have that type of subtitle. With that type of subtitle, then you have to set your expectations low for quality. Despite that, I was dismayed when a large portion of the book went into the details of an illness the author and several other people got from their time in the jungle.

This is a book about the exploration for the mythical Ciudad Blanca in Honduras. It was also known as the City of the Monkey God, presumably the people who used to live in this lost city would worship monkeys, well they are prevalent in the jungle. One man was dedicated to finding this lost city. He isn’t an archeologist, just someone with money, time, and liked adventures.

It took him nearly twenty years, and with advancements of technology, he was able to assemble a team to do another search. The team consisted of journalists, writers, photographers, and filmmakers (which included the author, writing for National Geographic). Later it also included archeologist and anthropologists to round out the team as scientific and acceptable to the academic community. Well, it almost was, controversy still did arise and partly due to the change of government. Which yes, this adventurer did have a hand in overthrowing the Honduras government in favor of someone who was more to his way of thinking about exploring the deep jungle.

The team did find a large city that was abandoned around 500 years ago, and in fact found two large cities. They looked to have at one time had thousands of inhabitants. They also found several caches of artifacts that were still buried and left untouched since those people left the ancient city.

I could have done without the extremely lengthy discussion on the parasite and infection the author and several of the team contracted from their time in the deep jungle. Certainly, one would expect some mention, but it kept going and at great length it started to feel like another book was being written.

Overall, I did learn about something as I hadn’t heard about this Honduras exploration before, despite all the publicity. Have a feeling the author does better with his fictional writing, which maybe one day I will try out.