Kronos Rising

Hawthorne (Memoirs of a Gym Rat) inflates stereotypes past readers’ patience in this supercharged but ponderous story straight out of a 1950s sci-fi monster flick. The little Florida town of Paradise Cove is protected by strapping but emotionally damaged sheriff Jake Braddock. When something out in the ocean begins devouring sharks, whales, and an occasional human for dessert, marine biologist Amara Takagi, also physically stunning but personally troubled, shows up to announce that the monster is a pliosaur, a huge marine reptile thought to be extinct for millions of years. This one is very hungry and very irritable. When it attacks the coast, the creature becomes the obsession of a senator who hires a big-game hunter to bag the beast. With fewer clots of purple prose, cardboard characters, and stretches of berserk hyper-action, this adventure could have been a major guilty pleasure; instead, it’s just a monstrous chore. [em](BookLife) [/em]