The Anomaly

By: Michael Rutger

Narrated by: Brandon Williams

A rogue archaeologist is trapped in a Grand Canyon cave as a conspiracy theory comes to life in this "take no prisoners" survival thriller that puts our hero up against impossible odds (Preston & Child).

Not all secrets are meant to be found.

Nolan Moore is a rogue archaeologist hosting a documentary series derisively dismissed by the "real" experts, but beloved of conspiracy theorists.

Nolan sets out to retrace the steps of an explorer from 1909 who claimed to have discovered a mysterious cavern high up in the ancient rock of the Grand Canyon. And, for once, he may have actually found what he seeks. Then the trip takes a nasty turn, and the cave begins turning against them in mysterious ways.

Nolan's story becomes one of survival against seemingly impossible odds. The only way out is to answer a series of intriguing questions: What is this strange cave? How has it remained hidden for so long? And what secret does it conceal that made its last visitors attempt to seal it forever?

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2018 Michael Rutger (P)2018 Hachette Audio

Critic reviews

"Make no mistake: THE ANOMALY is the real deal."—Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child, #1 New York Times bestselling authors of the Pendergast series

"THE ANOMALY simmers... Intriguing [and] never predictable.... will appeal to fans of exploration and survival along with 'The X-Files' crowd."—Associated Press

"Fans of the paranormal thrillers of Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child will relish this superior debut from screenwriter Rutger, who makes the fantastic seem less so by dint of his self-aware, flawed lead and his ability to inject gallows humor into tense situations. Rutger milks every ounce of suspense from his plot."—Publishers Weekly (starred, boxed review)

Glaring Flaws and Cliches, yet Oddly Entertaining

This book has a completely ridiculous plot with 2 dimensional sociopathic bad guys that explain their whole plan for 15 minutes while they could just be killing the protagonists, but instead giving them just enough time to find a way out of said sticky situation. It basically reads like a scooby doo cartoon. But the thing is, I like scooby doo. And dumb bad guys. And cliched plots. So, pretty good all around.

Fun read/listen

This seems like a great set up for a series. I enjoy monster stories, archeological quests, and historical conspiracies. Can’t wait to see what’s next.

Also: great dialogue and narration

Great Book!

Excellent narration. Perfect range of voices. Amazing and well put together storyline. Thought provoking. Must listen!!

okay but very slow story

not a bad story but it took way to long for the story to get started

Did not disappoint!

I'm pretty stingy with my 5 star reviews, but whatever, I loved that. When's the movie?

Good Sci-Fi

Very well written and engaging overall. The plot gets looser and less plausible as a fairly weak ending approaches, but it's a good read anyway.

stuck in a cave

don't be fooled, this book is mostly about our characters getting stuck in a cave and running low on resources. it also mostly takes place in the dark because of this. too many of the concepts are left completely vague because it's dark or the characters decide to go back to the main room to cry and eat.

think of "The descent" not "Indiana Jones meets X-Files"

Creeped me out. Do not listen to late at night.

Wow this book was wild! Only main complaint is it does sorta take a good chunk of this book to finally get to an interesting point. The earlier parts of this book is kinda a slog but once you get past some of the build up to a particular discovery then holy wow does this increase in intensity.

This turned out to be legitimately terrifying and i made the mistake of getting through this at night.

My stomach dropped a few times over the situation this team found themselves in and i had a lot of fear just watching them fumble around and exploring, knowing something horrible is going to happen.

Kinda like watching a scary movie and totally not wanting the main characters to go through a dark and creepy door, except every door in this book is dark and creepy.

The characters wernt really expanded on too much to make them interesting enough. They definetly gave off that vibe of 'coworkers that you know and like'. Enough was done for them all though to still care what happens to them and not wanting harm to come to anyone.

The world building and writing was incredible. The author did such a good job painting a vivid picture of the surroundings, it was very easy to get sucked into this world and 'see' what was going on along with these characters. I was thoroughly creeped out.

Another draw back was the ending. I'm going to be vague to avoid spoilers but all this build up to the ending didn't really pay off in my opinion. The ending felt too easy, cheap even. Would have been cool to see a more doomsday approach and just give us a bad ending. Instead this stays safe.

Very unique!

Definitely an interesting story and FRESH! I have never read or listened to something in sci-fi or horror like this and I appreciated the unique vision of this author. I enjoyed it throughly and look forward to new works by Rutger. Interesting stuff!

Captured my closterphobia.

While some of this story dragged at times, this book got interesting quickly in the caves. I had to turn the book off at night because I didn't want to drift off and miss what happened.