What if your first job turned into a treasure hunt?
It’s 1987. Sam is a rookie geologist who finds herself working for a dodgy entrepreneur in the small South American country of Sierramar. At first, it seems as if she has made a mistake. Bored and badly paid, she struggles to adapt; thank goodness for her mad friend Gloria.
When a work trip to the jungle yields a clue to a long-hidden … yields a clue to a long-hidden archaeological treasure, Sam gets involved in an expedition to uncover the truth. But she’s not the only one who is searching, and some will kill to get there first.
Will Sam survive her first adventure?
Fool’s Gold is book one in the complete Sam Harris Adventure series. If you like an exciting adventure with realistic storylines in an exotic location, set before modern technology, you’ll love this novel.
Buy Fool’s Gold and have an adventure with Sam!
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It was just a nice quick read
A great adventure read. Took me back to my early days as a geologist and the wild rides into the unknown we’d take. Hard to put down and easy to read.
The year is 1987 and Sam Harris is a newly graduated geologist facing a world that still thinks of women unequal to men. She wants to prove that she is a value to society and to her profession, so she takes a job with a less than stellar individual to get credentials on her resume.
Sam has been hired on to examine soil and rocks to determine if there is gold waiting to be found. She is thrust into an adventure within the jungles of Sierramar with a drunk, egotistical, and lecherous lead geologist who has an agenda of his own.
Along the way, Sam makes friends with Gloria (a mafia’s daughter) and Alfredo (a treasure hunter) and soon finds herself trying to navigate the jungles, escape daring situations, prove herself, and stay one step ahead of danger.
Fool’s Gold is an action and adventure much like Indian Jones, but with a strong lead female character.
I received Fool’s Gold, the first of the Sam Harris series, from TheFussyLibrrian, P.J. Skinner, and Amazon Digital Services. Thank you all for sharing your hard work with me. I have read this novel of my own volition, and this review reflects my honest opinion of this work. I am pleased to recommend PJ Skinner to friends and family. She writes a tight, exciting mystery with realistic characters in locales we are not always familiar with. This is a series I will want to complete.
It’s 1987 and Englishwoman Sam Harris has just finished qualifying for her Master’s degree in geology. Of course, in 1987 mining was an occupation almost exclusively held by men and she has student loans that will kick in immediately, so she really needs a job. She is offered one in the rainforest of Sierramar in South America. The entrepreneur offering her this position is very much as shifty as a used car salesman, and the pay sounds ok but is perhaps not forthcoming, but it’s a job, it will give her practical experience, and it will look really good on her resume.
Our cast is made up, for the most part, of the natives who live in the isolated, primitive communities scattered through the rainforests of Sierramar, most accessible by river travel or sometimes by train, or only occasionally on wildly erratic two tracks wandering through the forest. There are no motels, hotels, or hostels, no indoor plumbing, and the available bedding is often infested by bedbugs and mosquitos. The food is good, however, and plentiful, and Sam enjoys the company of the women she meets as she travels through the country-side searching for signs of gold in and near the rivers of the region. The men involved in the search are a different story. Again 1987 was a time when macho was considered a masculine asset. Native men treat her with respect, but she is almost raped by a fellow Englishman. A naive Sam has to establish new boundaries of what she will tolerate but she adjusts very quickly to a stance that will protect her from the gropings of men in general and Englishmen in particular. She is her only protection as her boss Mike cannot travel with the crew because of heart health issues.
And then Sam finds the sign of the snake. This could be the X that marks the spot of ancient Incan artifacts of gold – but if it is, turning that treasure over to the native communities would have to be the honorable thing to do… But it is doubtful that boss Mike and the wealthy Englishman who is ultimately footing the bill for this wild ride will feel that way about it…
Boring
Poor character building. I am afraid I couldn’t finish the story. I hated the main characters, the interaction was boring and I found the plot uninteresting, if there was one.
Good read
Well this book was incredibly dull and uninteresting and didn’t really have any mystery or intrigue at all. Most of the book didn’t have anything to do with a mystery and treasure, instead it was a book about a group of people trying to find gold. And this search was conducted in an utterly boring normal way that made me wonder if I was actually reading a non-fictional book following an actual gold mining expedition. Then in the final 100 pages or so the treasure pops up and it becomes a search for it, but it doesn’t get exciting or interesting after that at all. Because it is essentially the same story as the first part of the book, but this time with an extra character and some characters being a bit more aggressive. Overall though the actual story just isn’t something interesting to read and follow at all.
The dialogue and characters I feel were major issues with my enjoyable of the book also. In that they all kinda felt wooden or fake, like they weren’t actually people and just kinda going through the paces. There is a more main point in the female lead trying to fit into a male dominated profession in the late 80’s, but it never got brought up and explored in a way that felt natural. Characters will just make a sexist remark, and she doesn’t respond in a very natural way. It almost feels more like a parody of sexism then actual sexism in the way it gets presented. Many times, dialogue between characters didn’t seem to fit very well, and it could have been an author’s choice to show language barriers between an English speaker and a Spanish speaker but if it was, it wasn’t done in a very good way. And instead just made the dialogue very bland and forgettable.
The twist at the end of the novel was really terrible also, it wasn’t built up well and felt thrown together. It doesn’t feel like something that could ever happen in real life, simply because of human greed. And I feel the whole reason it went the way it did, was so a second book could be written while keeping the characters in the same scenarios and conditions.
Overall, I didn’t enjoy the read at all and had to force myself to really finish it. When I expected it to improve or change it never did, and just continued with more of the same. Just know you can’t go in expecting this amazing treasure hunt and adventure through the jungle, or a deep mystery novel. And instead expect a rather mundane expedition into the jungle with an unbelievable twist at the end for no real reason. But at least it had good enough editing and was perfectly readable.