I’ll warn ahead, this totally spoils the story in a few ways. If you intend to read the book, don’t read this first.
I’d like to start by saying “I feel lied to”. There’s nothing more that I hate than picking up a book, reading the back, being interested, intrigued by the title, and then delving into the pages and realizing that it BARELY has to do with what’s on the book.
I’m going to assume that our main character, Fiona or “Finn”, was the reasoning behind the title of the book. She’s into archaeology and all that stuff and generally gets herself in trouble with each expedition. Lara Croft, anyone?
What I really liked about this book was the level of inter-connecting lines going through it. You’ve got a psychotic Mexican Drug Lord who wants money for warheads. A Russian-Cuban submarine captain smuggling drugs between countries. An archaeologist and her Lord friend who are looking for a Codex. A bunch of high-ranking Catholics in a secret society “Black Knights” who blatantly remove all obstacles. A son of a Nazi who likes to share information for large sums of money about anyone he can get information on. A pharmaceutical company who wants a mutated plant. And then randomly you have Cortez, the heretic, who the Codex belongs to.
What I don’t like about this, is that it feels rather scattered throughout the book. Now, I’m used to reading some heavy-duty bricks I like to call books. With 30+ main characters with inter-weaving stories and you know that it’ll eventually connect. And generally they are going to a location that may be random, but makes sense as you read it. I read this thinking ‘Okay, but what does this have to do with the Yucatan?’ the whole way through. Yeah, I get that it all leads there. But what was the point. The treasure wasn’t even there in the end. It just seemed like the entire story was to get her where the action was happening, vs the action happening cause of something she set off. So in that way I’m really disappointed in this story.
10 out of 10 for interest
8 out of 10 for execution
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