A page-turner of the highest order.
In Cornell’s thriller, an unprecedented discovery could invalidate much of what historians believe about humankind’s ancient past.
While on an archeological venture in Jordan, members of a private military firm excavate ancient vessels similar to those housing the Dead Sea Scrolls. The company’s CEO, Victor Finn, enlists the services of expert paleolinguist Holly Webster and former Special Ops soldier Jack Butler to not only unravel the mystery surrounding the indecipherable text inside the vessels, but to travel back to the Middle East to search for more related relics. What the group doesn’t realize, however, is the existence of the Brotherhood, a radical Islamic organization whose mission is to ensure that the accepted historical paradigms of the day are protected and that anything or anyone that challenges those beliefs is promptly destroyed. The discoveries that Webster and Butler make in the field are jaw-dropping—a drastically different history of the Israelites’ Exodus from Egypt, the translation of the original language of ancient man, the first Rosetta Stone, the unearthing of Moses’ tomb, etc. And even these revelations pale in comparison to what they ultimately uncover. But with the Brotherhood bent on destroying them and everything that the remote site has sheltered for millennia, will humankind ever know the literally earth-shattering secrets of their forefathers? The strength of this novel could also be its biggest weakness—although the Indiana Jones-like action and adventure is undeniably gets the adrenaline flowing, it’s also formulaic and, at times, predictable. But even the predictability can’t stifle the sheer audacity of this storyline; it’s apparent that Cornell had as much fun writing this novel as readers will have experiencing it. Powered by a highly intelligent, meticulously researched and provocative narrative that challenges numerous historical and religious convictions regarding humankind’s past, Cornell’s tale is a breakneck-paced, edge-of-your-seat thriller in the vein of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code.
A page-turner of the highest order.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1617394317
Page Count: 356
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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