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Steve Berry is probably the best at what he does - write intelligent and well-researched international historical thrillers. With secrets decoded from Charlemagne's Tomb, Malone and co. In 1938, Forrest Malone (Cotton's father) was Commander of a U.S.
The Library of Alexandria. Cotton gets hold of a government document indicating the actual purpose of this sub mission - to find a revelation hidden in Anartica that may prove the existence of a great race of intellectuals who existed thousands of years ago and may have been responsible for many of the world's great wonders and eternal mysteries.Teaming up with two German sisters who's father was also on board that ill-fated sub, they find themselves pitted against an evil U.S. In the wave of novels in this genre - made ever-popular by Dan Brown's "Angels & Demons" and "The DaVinci Code" - Steve Berry has continued to release novel after novel in the Cotton Malone series that satisfying and exciting reads.In "The Charlemagne Pursuit", Berry refers at one point to his previous novels in comparison to this tale: "Malone had seen some impressive things: The Templar Treasure.
Nuclear sub that mysteriously disappeared with all eleven crew memebers assumed killed. The tomb of Alexander the Great. But none of those compared to what he saw now." This novel exceeds those afore-mentioned tales because of how personal the tale is to his lead character, Cotton Malone.
Admiral and hired assassins who do not want the secret of the sub uncovered. follow the path the Nazis themselves pursued in the 1930's that lead them to an amazing discovery hidden in the ice of Anartica.Well-written, smartly paced and fully engaging - "The Charlegmagne Pursuit" reads quickly for a 500+ page novel and Berry is at the top of his game.
That also means that you can put this book down frequently and do something else, since no matter how thrilling the situation may be, you know it will change again quickly, and you can easily pick up where you left off. Steve Berry changes scenes so rapidly in his latest novel, The Charlemagne Pursuit, that I began to feel whiplashed. Berry excels at the depths to which he can exploit the behavior of schemers and the dysfunction of families. Berry reprises Cotton Malone for this tale, and follows a plot structure that he's used before: bad guys go after Malone, he eludes them, and uses his powers of recollection and analysis to solve complicated historical puzzles. The brief chapters leave lots of cliffhangers. Whether the history bears any resemblance to facts matters little to most readers, so Berry grabs pieces of fact and lets his imagination soar, but always in short spurts. If you like rapid-fire scenes and history as it might have been, give The Charlemagne Pursuit a try.Rating: Two-star (Mildly Recommended)
It seemed to me that his more recent books have been a tad forced and I've had difficulty in persevering to the last page. I thought the last page when Cotton Malone is roused by an intruder in the night was especially cheesy and will happily go through life ignorant as to the intruder's significance.I enjoyed Mr. The premise of each of these books was based on just enough fact to be plausible, and each contained a nice mix of really smart characters, both good and evil. Steve Berry has a truly marvelous imagination. There are too many good books in the world to waste valuable reading time. Berry's earlier books so good (the description of the excavation of Charlemagne's tomb by Otto was riveting), this whole effort was pretty hackneyed.
Despite glimpses of what made Mr.
Charlemagne was the worst, and I doubt I'll be reading any more of them.
Undoubtedly there will be more, but unless Mr.
I really enjoyed The Third Secret, The Amber Room and the Templar Legacy.
Berry's earler books, and think he is a gifted writer, so will keep an eye on reviews of new ones.
It seems lately when writers run out of ideas they head on down to Antarctica, though sometimes with more success (Blood and Ice being an example).
The cardboard characters were uninteresting and colorless, the contrived and exhausting plot that smacked faintly of Clive Cussler was dull and I didn't much care what happened to either.
Berry writes up to the potential of those earlier books, I've read my last one.
Liked the book and the Malone series. Also the Alexandria Link. That's all I have read.
Of course, whether one will enjoy this novel depends a lot on whether one appreciates the alternate universe he has built for these books. Add to that the substitute of Nazi scion twin sisters Dorothea and Christl for Cassiopeia Vitt and their aging mother for Thorvalsen and the cast of characters isn't as strong.Still, the final scenes and reveals in Antarctica are as beautiful and powerful as anything Berry's written, images that are hard to shake even as time passes after finishing the book. Yes, there was a real Charlemagne, but this "pursuit" is entirely fictional, testing the limits of suspension-of-disbelief for many, and even in this fictional world, only loosely impacts the story.Despite the return of Cotton and his pursuit across Europe, the main thrust of the story takes place in the US, pitting formerly minor characters Stephanie Nell (Malone's former boss) and Edwin Davis against a new adversary, Langford Ramsey. In the course of pursuing the truth about his father, Cotton moves through a world of intrigue, both modern and historical.At this point, Mr. In it, Mr.
Forrest Malone was lost when the experimental nuclear submarine he captained went down in 1971 on a secret mission. But they do win out.These past couple novels seem to put Mr. Berry's fourth novel now starring spy-turned-bookseller, Cotton Malone. Mr.
Ramsey's goal is appointment to the Joint Chiefs of Staff (and possibly a candidacy for vice-president). Berry feels the need to integrate with these otherwise unequaled passages. Berry is quite adept at telling his tales, and doesn't usually falter. Berry's first books are essentially set in this world, fiction though they are. He is an obviously skilled writer who books are always a pleasure to read.
The Charlemagne Pursuit is Mr. To accomplish this, he and his hirelings murder people all over the US and Europe. And, of course, he has knowledge of what happened with Malone's submarine.The story works but it's difficult not to miss Cotton being the primary focus. They barely win out over the ridiculous amount of bloodshed that Mr. For the most part, it works except for when he mentions names like Dick Cheney, which only highlights the fiction in his world. This one is no exception. Malone pursues the truth about his father's death.
However, there are nagging things encroaching on what made a book like The Templar Legacy a near-perfect thriller--moving the focus away from Malone, the creeping ahistoricity of the background, the increasingly standard thriller killers and chases. In the past couple, however, he has been straying further and further into a world of his own making, with different world governments and alternate leadership. To his credit, there is much less of this in The Charlemagne Pursuit than in his last novel, The Venetian Betrayal.And yet, this movement away from the real world also seems to coincide with a move away from a real historical mystery which made his earlier books fundamentally more interesting--the amber room, the third secret of Fatima, the destruction of the Templars, the lost library of Alexandria. Berry at a turning point. The last passage of this novel seems to give a lead-in to the next one (another blah device) but, hopefully, he'll be able to reach back into what made some of his earlier novels special and raise his game for his next outing.
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