Indiana Jones and the Seven Veils is the third novel in the Indiana Jones series published by Bantam Books. It’s also the third original Indy novel written by Rob MacGregor. Released in December 1991, this is the most like “traditional” Indiana Jones in the series to date when compared to the other two books that saw our hero still a student in the first one, and just starting out as a professor in the second, and having a very basic adventure in the British Isles that, to be honest, didn’t feel very exotic at all.
Here, we’ve got Indy on a dig in Tikal, Guatemala, from the start. Admittedly he’s also got students on the dig (and there’s a whole side plot of Deirdre Campbell, the love of his life, being annoyed at his interest in other students), so it’s not quite the prologue to Raiders of the Lost Ark. But it’s something.
Back to civilisation for a moment (see how this one flows like Raiders?), and then onto the Amazon where Indy hopes to find the missing Percy Fawcett. An inspiration for the Indiana Jones character on some levels, Fawcett was a real-life geographer, artillery officer, cartographer, archaeologist, and explorer who disappeared in 1925. With Fawcett’s interest being in an ancient lost city which he – and others – believed existed in the Amazon rainforest, you can see where this one’s going already.
What MacGregor has to do, of course, is fill in enough pages between, “Let’s go looking for Fawcett…” and “Whatever happened to Fawcett?” to make the story worthwhile. On the whole, I think he succeeds but let’s start with what I don’t think works. I mentioned a whole side plot with Deirdre Campbell earlier and… yeah. Not only does she come across as quite different and basic compared to the smart, spunky girl from the previous novel, but the way she and Indy fight for the first section of the novel feels awkward, unrealistic, and forced. Then she leaves him “for good” only to be back almost immediately and within what feels like a week or so, they get married. It’s all over the place. And yes, if you’re thinking, “I never knew Indiana Jones got married before Marion…” now you do. And how’s it going to be resolved because, assuredly, he’s not a married man 10 years from now during Temple of Doom?
I think this novel would have been better off not having the whole marriage thing and letting Deirdre go after the Guatemala segment at the start of the book. Indeed, if I was writing this, I would have gone in the direction that she never came on the dig at all or, at best, had been on the dig but had already had her fight with Indy and had left. She feels like such a drag to have around most of the time and I wonder if MacGregor even enjoyed writing the character because, as I said, she’s really quite different to how she was portrayed in Indiana Jones and the Dance of the Giants. My main interest in Deirdre while reading this was, “How long is she going to hang around in these books and when/how will she leave them?”
On the good side of the ledger, meanwhile, I think tying the story into Percy Fawcett was a sound decision. The idea that he found his lost city is appealing and the way he gets to meet Indy and be somewhat heroic in his own right, is great. But when dealing with an historical character who is lost to time, you know there’s going to be a big but… somewhere along the line and I think the novel does well to give a credible reason for Fawcett’s disappearance. Less credible is a deus ex machina character who we met in the previous novel and pops up at the end of this story to save the day – or, at least, Indy. And no, it’s not Indy’s mate, Jack Shannon! In some ways I could barely believe the author went there.
If it feels like I’m half-hearted about the novel, I’m really not. The idea that inhabitants of the lost city can ‘veil’ themselves and disappear – in much the same way they can veil their city from outsiders – is quite good. And when we start getting into dream landscapes and not being entirely sure if scenes are happening in awakened or asleep states of consciousness, the story certainly feels like it’s trying to do something different and is definitely not a children’s novel by any stretch. Indeed, I think a child would get thoroughly lost in some of these scenes. So there’s some real meat on the bones here, for sure.
Overall, is it better than the first two novels? Yes, even with the Deirdre character being written oddly, and the whole marriage thing, there’s still plenty of exotic locations, chase scenes, fights, and a general sense of adventure that keeps the story chugging along to its conclusion. Your mileage may vary on the resolution, as mine did, but I don’t think it soils itself in the way that, say, Dial of Destiny did. So I’ll be throwing a 7.5/10 at this. Better than what came before it. Far more Indiana Jones. But perfect? No, it does a few too many strange things for my taste. With a good edit, I could imagine the same story another point higher, so the ingredients are all there. I’d just ditch one or two of them and try again.