Book Review - Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

Max Allan Collin's novel, based on the movie by Rob Cohen in the Mummy series, may as well be the best movie novelization I have read.

The novel tells the story of a young adventurer Alex O' Connell, who discovers the tomb of the Dragon Emperor Han, who built the Great Wall of China. He succeeds in getting the mummy into a museum in Shanghai, but only after being attacked by a mysterious assassin. Meanwhile, Alex's parents, Rick and Evelyn O' Connell, who starred in the previous adventures, are entrusted the job to take precious gem, the Eye of Shambhala, or rather the Eye of Shangri-La, to Shanghai. Coincidentally, son and parents meet in Evelyn's brother Jonathan's nightclub in Shanghai. They went to meet an old friend, Wilson, in the museum where the mummy was stored but it turned out that Wilson had betrayed them to a nationalist paramilitary group, who want to resurrect the emperor. The emperor is revived using an elixir stored in the Eye of Shangri-La. It was then that the assassin who tried to stop Alex from retrieving the mummy revealed herself and tried to kill the revived Emperor, but failed.
The assassin's name was Lin and she agreed to help the O' Connells (with Jonathan) to stop the mummy once and for all. So they traveled to the Himalayas, to seek the help of Lin's immortal mother, Zi Yuan, and to stop the Emperor from regaining his human form. It turned out that Zi Yuan had cursed the Emperor many years ago to turn into terracotta. However, the mummy and his servants from the nationalist paramilitary group managed to fully resurrect the mummy using the enchanted waters of Shangri-La.
The group then chases the Emperor to the Great Wall of China, where the Emperor unleashes his army. Zi Yuan calls upon the dead buried under the Wall to take revenge on the hated Emperor. A final battle takes place, where by Zi Yuan sacrifices herself to get the only weapon which can kill the Emperor - a cursed dagger. The epic battle finally ends when Alex slays the Dragon Emperor with the dagger. At last, the dead buried under the Wall could rest in peace and all was well for the O ' Connells, Lin and Jonathan.

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