Yup. I've read another book involving the discovery of Atlantis as its central theme. And while you might think I'd be getting a little tired of that idea by now, I have to say this version is remarkably interesting. For one thing, the romance is a little more thought out than 'fit girl + fit guy + adventure = everyone chucks their clothes off', which is always encouraging. In fact, in the whole trilogy (what can I say, it was enjoyable, the library happened to have all three of them hanging about so I've now read them all...) there isn't any major throwing off of clothes. Which is quite exceptional for a thriller. Anyway, that minor digression aside, it's got a very interesting plot, and a fascinating main character (or main two characters in fact--Sister Serenghetti is a fantastic character and definitely more three dimensional than a lot of women in thrillers--or characters in general in thrillers). A different decision of locating Atlantis than any I've seen before, and an interesting location for it at that.
Lots of excitement, the sciency and historically stuff is plausible enough (I confess I'm no expert on ancient history or on science, but it certainly made sense), and... lots of excitement. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and there's an interesting twist on the archaeologist main character. He's a rather discredited bloke amongst the scientific community, a bit of an iconoclast, and also an astro-archaeologist. In other words, he looks at how the stars line up with ancient monuments, because although he doesn't believe in it the ancients did and so he uses star systems etc to get inside their heads. Also, having a nun as a second main character is fascinating, and she's a believable, realistic character to boot. Actually, she's not really a nun any more, but that's by the by.
I can thoroughly recommend this book as an intriguing and edge-of-the-seat addition to the multitudes (well, four or five at the very least) of other books using the legend of Atlantis as their basis. Brilliant.
No comments:
Post a Comment