THE BOOK OF INVASIONS
by Rod Vick
After the discovery of a mysterious map in Greenland, a tormented archaeology assistant and her allies fight a sinister cult trying to recover an ancient Egyptian secret.
A Hollywood screenwriter might pitch this paranormal adventure by Vick (A Phantom Walks Among Us, 2019, etc.) as the “Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Meets Indiana Jones,” though heroine Limerick “Ricky” Crowe’s has body art that consists not of a dragon but of a Celtic triskelion, an ancient three-lobed mythological symbol. Ricky left her native Ireland with her sister and widowed mother after the death of her father and subsequently endured a traumatic adolescent rape-mutilation while growing up in troglodyte Alabama. Now an alcoholic introvert, Ricky finds solace in online gaming in her Chicago apartment and in archaeological fieldwork with a local institute. Then her sister Sasha disappears in tandem with a massacre, at a climatology outpost in Greenland, by armed raiders who struck the remote site after the discovery of an ancient map, seemingly of Egyptian origin. The doomed Sasha managed to send the map to Ricky and her research teammates, who are promptly targeted by a ruthless global cult. Elements of Irish folklore and the Old Testament fall into place in Ricky’s bewildered and angry but resourceful mind, and soon she and allies are on an international chase to recover an ancient Egyptian secret of life and death. Escapist beach reads such as Clive Cussler’s Sahara and Iris Johansen’s Storm Cycle have jeep-driven down similarly dusty, artifact-strewn paths, but here the supernatural—not just lost wisdom, treasure, or technology—lies at the center of a conspiracy that has bad guys a step ahead of the heroes and cliffhangers that involve literally hanging from cliffs. Vick keeps his heroine credibly flawed during hideous ordeals and drops surprise after surprise until the end. Lucky encounters with occult-hieroglyphics interpreters in back alleys may be a bit much. But a grand spirit of master storytelling hangs over the novel, and readers will be glad to go along for the ride.
A top-notch paranormal adventure is supercharged by a far-fetched premise with unexpected verve, emotion, and thrills.