Ancients

Well, I managed up to part way through the first chapter. Which is more than it sounds like, because the prologue was ridiculously long and involved. I'm sure the same amount of background information could've been given in a much shorter period and with a bit more drama. And it seemed excessive to draw on what, four or five separate historical periods to chart the continuation of a secret society. Surely that sort of stuff could've been left to be discovered further on into the book. Instead, it seemed more like the author wanted to get all the historical stuff out the way before getting onto the 'real' story. Hmm. Then the first chapter started with more disparate accounts of various natural disasters, making the whole beginning feel rather fragmented. Getting close to fifty pages in, we finally meet what I assume from the blurb is to be the main characters, lying on a boat and drunk. By this point, I was pretty well fed up, and gave up just as they were about to go and confront some possible archaeological pirate type people with a single gun between the two main characters. Or something of the sort. Perhaps it picked up after that. But I was rather fed up by that point and took it back to the library. Maybe I shouldn't have done, maybe the story would have improved and got rather exciting, but to be quite frank, if a book hasn't grabbed my interest by the time I'm fifty odd pages in, I'm about ready to give up on it if it's not an author I've read before, no matter how good the blurb sounded.

So unless you fancy skipping the prologue (which is a pretty major piece of writing in itself, rather defying what I thought was the general consensus that a prologue will be fairly short), and it does pick up, I wouldn't bother. However, if you did get further, please correct me and I'll get it back out the library. Like I said, it did have the potential to be quite interesting, but I just got rather fed up.