That First Addictive Story

When I was young I never found reading for fun to be a thing I could get into. I didn't come from one of those households that encouraged us to sit around reading about far away lands, fantastic journeys, or space and the final frontier. It was a different time, and back then parents wanted their kids out of the house as much as possible. Of course, back then it was safe to send the kids out on their own at age 10 and you knew they'd return when they were hungry or it got dark outside.

Even in school, when doing book reports, or papers, I never found the reading bug. It actually wasn't until my mid-20s that I learned how much fun and how enjoyable a good book can be. Yet, it wasn't my first book that I'd find that was my own form of heroin. It would be a couple of books into the journey before I would find myself addicted.

DOMAIN

After finding the novel Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror and its sequel, The Trench, I was following the work of Steve Alten and waiting for a third in the series about the prehistoric sharks when he released the first of the Domain trilogy. Alten moved from his stories about what would happen if the ancient Carcharodon Megalodon returned to Mayan archeology, a subject that was at the time becoming popular because of the 2012 hysteria at the beginning of the century.

Domain involved the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago and had much to do with the mythical end of the world foretold by the Mayan calendar. As Michael Gabriel escapes from a mental facility, he and his psychologist, Dominque Vazquez, go on an adventure that will bring them face to face with the "end of the world" and an encounter that folds Dominque into centuries old legend as she becomes the mother of the first two humans to exhibit powers of the ancient Hunaphu.

Domain is the type of read that ends each chapter in a way that compels you to read on, no matter what. I found myself struggling to focus on other things, so excited by the book, and the events in the current world that paralleled the story. As the world moved closer and closer to 2012 with each passing minute, the fact that I picked up Domain and was about to go on vacation in the same area as many of the books key events had me hooked.

Alten is a master at weaving tales that are rooted from the tangible bits of our history or our current events. Much the way he did with Meg, playing on our curiosity and our fear of the unknowns in our oceans, Alten played on our knowledge of the past and our lack of understanding about the Mayan culture. He takes you down an interesting and enthralling road of adventure, excitement, mystery, and intrigue as government officials try to silence Michael and an otherworldly event slowly unravels around he and Dominque.

Alten turned me into a reader with Domain, a book I'll forever be thankful I found. I completely enjoyed the Meg books, but it was after reading Domain that I went on to read its sequel, and that brought me to other books. I eventually read the works of James Patterson, Dean Koontz, Stephen King, and yes...JK Rowling. I would go on to read Alten's works as they would come out, but it was ultimately Alten and his style of story telling that made me want to read more, and it was his story that made me imagine that one day I could tell stories as well as he.

If you're into history, historical fiction, and a story that's going to be interwoven between multiple sites, times, and planets, this story takes you on the ride of a lifetime that is meant to someday be portrayed on the big screen. If you're a sci-fi or fantasy fan, make sure to read the sequel. The characters that come to life are the most colorful, promising, scary, and fun that you'll find outside of a Harry Potter book. Then follow up with Phobos, the story that takes you all the way to the famous Martian moon that is now expected to strike the red planet one day.

Following Alten down his rabbit holes is an exercise in addictive, mind altering, experiences.