The Devil Colony by James Rollins – review

The Devil Colony has all you could want in a Sigma Force novel by James Rollins:  action, adventure, speculation, and a story ripped right out of the pages of history combined with a breakneck plot that incorporates the latest advances in cutting-edge (nano)technology. It’s the seventh book in the series so far, and it might very well be the best yet. Sigma Force mainstays Painter Crowe, its Director, and Commander Grayson Pierce are back, and in The Devil Colony, they discover that the Guild even played a part in the founding of America. They face perhaps their most dangerous villain yet, and they uncover secrets about the United States’ origins that may change forever the way you look at America.

The novel’s prelude takes us back to the Kentucky Territory in August of 1779. An archeological exploration is going on, unearthing Native artifacts from a long, serpent-shaped mound. Though some artifacts are discovered as the men dig into the body of the snake, the real prize is unearthed when they get to its head:  the immense skull of a mastodon, complete with tusks. But what’s inside the skull is what’s really important–gold. The men find the “entire inside of the skull had been plated in the precious metal.” What’s more, the gold has etched upon it what looks like “a crude map, with stylized trees, sculpted mountains, and snaking rivers,” and there is also writing that resembles Hebrew. Unfortunately, the men are attacked by Caucasians painted up and dressed to appear like Indians, and almost all of them are slaughtered before they can tell anyone about their discovery.

Cut to the present day:  Another prehistoric skull is found, this time in a cavern in Utah. The cavern is the final resting place of hundreds of mummies, preserved there by the actions of the hot springs, minerals and salts, and sulfur fumes prevalent in the geothermally active area. Their throats have been slit, and many still hold the Damascus knives in their hands that did the job. The knives are not like the ones that are pattern-welded and called Damascus today, but are the original type, that have a very large number of carbon nanotubes in them. The smiths who made them somehow knew at least something about nanotechnology. To this day, no one has duplicated the process accurately. Reading about this was a revelation to me, as I had assumed that the secret to manufacturing Damascus steel had been rediscovered, since there are so many people and companies that claim their knives are made from Damascus steel.

The skull is that of a saber tooth tiger, its outside plated in gold, its interior containing something icy cold which could trigger the end of the world. Along with the skull are boxes that look like ossuary boxes, but they contain gold hardened with cementite nanowires, rarer than any gold we have today. The process by which it was done is currently unknown to us. The gold also has etched symbols on it, similar to the map found in 1799. The mummies are dressed in Native Ute garb of the era in which they lived, but they are pale skinned.

Kai, Painter’s niece, is introduced in The Devil Colony, and I really liked the portrayal of her character. She has joined a radical Native organization, and has hidden in the cave with a backpack on loaded with C4, to seal the cavern up, rather than have the courts potentially rule against them and disturb the mummies’ resting place. It is easy to understand the frustration that Native peoples have built up over hundreds of years of being lied to and swindled by the American government, but Kai gets herself in way over her head when she agrees to take part in their plans.

Instead of continuing to stay in hiding, she bolts from the cavern, even though it’s broad daylight and there are crowds of people around, Native Americans who have been drawn there either out of curiosity or to protest any potential desecration or disruption of the sacred burial place, and news crews there to film the removal of the skull. Then, everything goes horribly wrong, as Kai’s backpack containing the C4, which she removes to make herself lighter and escape more easily, gets thrown near to the skull. There’s an explosion, the cavern is sealed, and Maggie, the anthropologist nearest to the skull, is vaporized, along with the skull. Though the C4 is not the cause of what happens, Kai and the other people there don’t know that at the time, so she tries to escape as fast as she can through the woods.

I mention this for two reasons: Kai’s attempted flight causes her to use her cell phone to call Painter, which gets him to travel to the area to help her, and the second reason is that she has smuggled out of the cavern two of the gold tablets. Rafael Saint Germaine, the brittle-boned hyper-brilliant villain of the novel, will stop at nothing to silence her and get the tablets for himself. Kai’s involvement neatly brings the novel’s hero and villain together in a plausible way, and makes a connection between the importance of the cavern and what’s inside it that interests both the Mormons and Utes. Also, the contents of the skull have set into motion seismic activity that endangers the whole area.

James Rollins has done an incredible amount of research on this novel, and spent two years writing it, and his diligence shows in one of his best written novels yet. He incorporates a lot of historical details into the novel, and information about the founding of America that many people have probably never heard of before. Like Steve Berry’s latest best seller, The Jefferson Key, Rollins cites the immense importance of President Thomas Jefferson to America’s history. I like that Rollins incorporates the Lewis & Clark expedition into the plot, and writes about Lewis’ roles as a scientist, soldier, and spy–he possesses the exact same qualities it takes to be a member of Sigma Force. Also, like Berry’s book, Rollins goes into Jefferson’s fascination with codes and ciphers, and he mentions that one of Jefferson’s codes wasn’t cracked until 2007. There are no real spoilers in this review, as James Rollins has gone into many of the facts and the details of the plot in both written and video interviews.

Did the lost tribes of Israel settle here? Were we originally supposed to have fourteen instead of thirteen colonies? Who was the “forgotten Founding Father” of America who had a profound influence on the Declaration of Independence and our Great Seal? What do registered spikes in the levels of geothermal neutrinos have to do with a volcanic eruption in Iceland? For the answers to these questions and more, read James Rollins’ Sigma Forces novel, The Devil Colony. It’s an excellent novel I highly recommend, one that especially fans of Michael Crichton, Steve Berry, and Dan Brown will love reading.