Review Rating
With the October 2004 review, we began rating the books on the basis of one to four trowels;
one trowel= don’t bother, to four trowels= run right out to your local book store and buy the hard cover!
Golden Oldies - reviewing previously unreviewed books by previously reviewed “greatest hits” authors!
As we approach nearly twenty-five years of the MVAC reviews of archaeological fiction, I thought it would be fun to re-visit six of the authors whose works have been reviewed in the past. Three of these authors have sadly passed away since I first reviewed them (Margot Arnold, Lynn Hamilton, and Elizabeth Peters); two have “retired” their archaeologist protagonists, Gideon Oliver (Aaron Elkins), and Emma Fielding (Dana Cameron); and one, (Kate Ellis) continues to put DI Wesley Peterson and his friend, archaeologist Neil Watson, in harm’s way as solve contemporary crimes that have their roots in the distant past. While these authors have been reviewed previously, these books have not.
The Temple of Shadow (for young readers) by Phillip Tomasso
Reviewed on: July 1, 2025
Severed Press: Hobert, Tasmania
2022 (PB)
YA
A quarter century ago, archaeologist Alexander Albright led an expedition into the Koatinenmo region of the Brazilian rain forest in the quest for a treasure supposedly buried in a jungle pyramid by a 17th century pirate named Roche Braziliano. The expedition failed short of its goal and Alexander returned home to take up a contemplative academic life on the University of Rochester campus—lecturing, writing, and raising his son Michael with his beloved wife, Priscilla, who tragically died while Michael was very young.
Now Alexander Albright has passed away and Michael has inherited a house full of memorabilia of his father’s excavating days, including a journal and map of that final abbreviated expedition into the Amazon. While musing at his parents’ graveside in the historic Mount Hope cemetery, Michael determines that he will try to honor his father’s memory by attempting to complete that last adventure—to find the treasure lost in the Brazilian rain forest for almost five hundred years. He has the financial resources to outfit an expedition, including travel costs, and he has a close-knit circle of friends, all of whom will be entering their final year of study at the University of Rochester before they graduate and head off into their separate “adult” lives. What better time to go on the adventure of a lifetime than that last undergraduate summer break? After some initial resistance, Michael’s four friends—girlfriend Amber Wu, future pre-law and sports agent Tymere Evans and his girlfriend, Natalie, and everybody’s best friend, affable Marshall Williams—buy in on the quest.
Michael is even able to hire the services of adventure guide, Gregory Hanson, who had provided those very same services for his father’s expedition twenty-five years earlier. The young adventurers meet up with Hanson and his staff at Fortaleza, on the northeastern coast of Brazil. Michael begins to second-guess his “spring-break” vision of their outing when he sees how hard-bitten and heavily armed Hanson’s staff is! The journey into the heart of the Amazon rain forest proves to be much more than any of the young people had bargained for. The helicopter flight through violent, tropical storms from Fortaleza to the Xingu River landing where their actual expedition is to “begin” is hair-raising enough, but they are barely underway when Marshall is dragged into the river by a giant anaconda and would have certainly died save the quick-thinking and bravery of Tymere. Every step of the quest is fraught with danger and more than once Michael agonizes over the stupid, thoughtless, dangerous venture he has brought upon his friends. The vivid description of the trek through torrential downpours, the dangers at every twist and turn in the rain forest, the over-flowing tributaries and even the death-defying rope suspension bridges over bottomless canyons—all could be tired cliches from a hundred novels and Saturday afternoon matinees, but the prose seems fresh and believable in the hands of a skilled author.
But the dangers on the trail that our young, now thoroughly bedraggled, heroes face, are nothing compared to those they must deal with when they finally reach the lost pyramid in the heart of the rain forest—and the denizens of that rain forest who protect it! This is high adventure at its rollicking best and while it might be a bit light on “real” archaeology, it is great, good fun to read—a true guilty pleasure! Four trowels!
