There are some good films made from bad novels and some bad films made from good novels, but the only thing that you can hope for from a novelization based on a screenplay is that it will fill in where the film left off, describing things that went by in a flash that maybe you wanted to spend some more time with. Raiders gives you nothing more than what you saw in the movie and sometimes considerably less.

I can accept a film novelisation which differs, sometimes radically, from the motion picture, but the adaptation of "Raiders" changes one rather important element: excitement. The first Indiana Jones film is a roaring B-movie, packed with adventure and thrills, albeit at the expense of any real depth (which is unsurprising when you consider the source material). This book is a shallow plodder, crippled by the author's remarkable inability to describe an action scene. Considering that there is little else in the plot that's a major handicap. Descriptions are confusing, unimaginative and fleetingly terse, while the attempts to flesh out motivations and characters are sporadic and seem incomplete. Several of the best moments in the film are missing here, which may disappoint fans, but to my mind the fault with this book is not that it fails to either represent or add to the movie, but that it's a scrappy bit of hack work in its own right. Not the best of the three movie novelisations, by a long chalk.

If a novelization of a movie is done well, such as this one, it will entertain you as much as the actual movie. This novel does just that. It keeps moving along just like the movie and is quite entertaining, especially with the added detail you don't get in the movie.

A good read for any age bracket.