X-Men Law of the Jungle Book

I love the cover of this book with a passion. Wolverine in all his violent fury caught up in a battle with Sauron is a great piece of artwork that catches the eyes immediately. Unfortunately, the one page pictures that appear at the beginning of every chapter aren't particular good at all and left me wishing they had just hired the guy who inked the cover to do the one page illustrations also.
The prose novel 'Law of the Jungle' predominantly takes place in the Savage Land, which is a prehistoric jungle hidden in the Antarctic, and while I'm not a fan of such a nonsensical idea the author brings the place to life and makes you believe it's a realm that exists. The X-Men have been summoned there by Ka-Zar, who is the protector of the Savage Lands, to help him in his fight against the tyrannical Sauron (the flying lizard on the cover) who is terrorizing his lands and killing his people. With the other X-Men engaged elsewhere it's left to the team of Wolverine, Beast, Storm, Iceman, Psylocke, Cannonball and Archangel to enter the Savage Lands and do whatever they can to stop Sauron's reign of terror.
I liked that a few different characters were added to the X-Men team in this novel with a few of the mainstays taken out...namely Cyclops and Jean Grey. Most of the X-Men novels feature the aforementioned couple and rightly so as Cyclops is the leader of the X-Men and Jean Grey is his wife and an original member of the team. However, that means there's usually very little variant in the prose novels on who compromises the X-Men even though it's a team of super-powered mutants whose membership changes quite often.
The story itself is one of the better ones in relation to the series of X-Men prose novels...no evil sweaters in this one!*
If you're not familiar with Psylocke she posses both telepathy and telekinesis and looks a lot like Elektra only adorned in blue/purple rather than red. She has a psychic knife and is a martial arts expert. As for the other not used so often character, namely Cannonball, he can fly at jet speeds shooting himself from the ground through the air like a cannonball, while encased in an invulnerable force field.
In between the attempts to stop Sauron there is some focus on the blossoming relationship between Psylocke and Archangel and in that sense they take the place of Cyclops and Jean Grey. Thankfully it's not overdone because X-Men fans aren't generally looking for romantic off shoots in their novels. It does serve as a well written detraction from the action taking place and is used to slow the story down and add more depth to the two characters with more of an emphasis being placed on Psylocke.
I always feel that any well established characters have to be part of a greater story in order to keep the reader interested. What do I mean by that? Well, take any major novel and its characters that are part of a series - say Bones and Cat from the Night Huntress series for instance - and you know that they aren't going to be killed as they're very much part of a franchise. As such, when they battle an evil adversary you know that they will overcome them or, at the very least, live to renew the fight another day. The same thing applies to the X-Men and so the ending is very much a forgone conclusion before you even start the book...good will triumph over evil. Due to this the story has to be compelling otherwise there's no point in continuing reading to see how it all turns out as the heroes will always win. 'Law of the Jungle' succeeds in being compelling and is very much up there with the best of the X-Men prose novels and if the new X-Men movie has whetted your appetite for this genre of book then I would recommend this particular novel as being a great place to start.

*It's embarrassing, as an fan of X-Men prose novels, to have to inform you of the situation of Rogue being bested by a bunch of flying sweaters that attack and ultimately smother her in the first novel of the X-Men/Avengers 'Gamma Quest Trilogy'. Some ideas should never see the light of day and that was certainly one of them. Shameful.