Book Review: Area 51, by Bob Mayer

I believe I first came across this when it was originally published back in 1997.  The title immediately interested me, but then after reading the back cover it just didn't appeal to me for some reason - I can't remember why.  It could be that the text was different back then - I've seen this happen to republished books over the years - but it just didn't sound interesting.  It may also be that there was an abundance of books with this kind of subject matter around that time which just weren't very good.

Fast-forward to 2016.  I see a social media post (facebook/twitter - I can't remember which) about  'Area 51 Time Patrol:  D-Day' being published soon.  I thought:  isn't that the book I saw quite a long time ago?  So, I looked into it.  Not only is it the same Area 51 that I saw years ago, but the series has grown (and, it was originally published under the pseudonym Robert Doherty).  There are nine (nine!) books in the main Area 51 series (7 books in the main storyline, plus two that appear to be prequels to the entire series), there is a Nightstalker trilogy, and then the Time Patrol series, which appears to be an extension of the Nightstalker series.  The series has grown over the years, but I don't recall ever seeing any of these books past the first one at my local bookstore (and I'm usually there a few times every month).  I'm finding this happening quite a bit recently - various books are becoming increasingly difficult to find a bookstores.  A bunch of bestselling authors I've recently started reading appear to have almost no presence in bookstores - but, thankfully, you can find just about everything at Amazon.

I noticed that all of the books had very high ratings, so I read the blurb on Area 51 again.  This sounded very interesting, and since 2015/2016 are years where I have been taking a chance on many authors I have not heard of before (and have gotten quite a bit of enjoyment reading as a result), I decided to take a chance yet again.

I'm sorry I didn't pick this up years ago!  This story has several elements that I enjoy - ancient civilizations and their mysteries, aliens, conspiracies, etc.  This story covered all of the bases, and addressed many mysteries of the ancient world:  Atlantis, the Egyptian pyramids, Easter Island, etc.  The story involves a journalist, an archaeologist, a former Nazi, UFO conspiracy theorists, and powerful military groups. I was surprised by a few things which were really unexpected.  Events do get wrapped up at the end pretty quickly, but I am very interested in what is going to happen in the next book, and I'll definitely be checking it out at some point.