The Atlantis Gene

 

If you are into supernatural thrillers, then this is a book for you. It's the third book in a recurring series about a number of characters, and the author does character development very well. This is the third book in what Roberts has titled the Destroyer series. The Atlantis Gene starts on the Island of Atlantis in the year 10,000 B.C. These are a genetically gifted people who face a cataclysmic destruction of their home. Most of the residents are killed, but a few scatter on ships and are able to mate with locals all over the world, thereby notching up the sophistication and longevity of the human population. The book ends in current times with a literal life and death struggle in the Vatican City. The battle is between good and evil, God and Satan. The supernatural is not a genre that I seek, but Pierce Roberts convinced me to have a look at it.

The Trojan Plague by Pierce Roberets

The Trojan Plague by Pierce Roberts is the second book I’ve read by this author. Although I wrote favorably of the first book, I couldn’t finish this one, abandoned the story at the 40% mark of the book. Roberts did use the same interesting cast of characters as before, including the husband and wife team of veterinarians, but the story just did not grab me enough to see it through to the end. Once again, this novel was about a Nazi conspiracy to bring about the final solution, and I’m tired of that story line. While the plot itself, aside from the characters was interesting, I was not able to suspend my reality testing enough. Also, the dialogue is weak, and there’s a lot of dialogue that is used to move the story along. So, I can’t give this novel a strong recommendation.

Death by DNA

Please note that I’m following the blog’s recent trial policy of doing book reviews with no more than six sentences. The reviewers have kept reading and listening to books on tapes, but our style of review which in some cases was appropriate for the Sunday Times book review section (both NY and LA), became too burdensome and we’ve fallen way behind doing the reviews. So, for now, we’re going to try this abbreviated style. The point is that we’re trying to let one another know if a book is worth while to read, a thumbs up or thumbs down is the pithy message you may be looking for.

I’m not sure how I came by this book in my Kindle, Death by DNA by Pierce Roberts, but it has been a very worthwhile read. Tom O’Dell was a hard working large animal veterinarian in rural Wisconsin, and when there was an unexplained worldwide die off of big numbers of a variety of animals, he was drafted by the USDA to be a CDC trained field investigator. What if one of the Nazi scientists, a brilliant person with no consciousness for anything other than the master race, had escaped to the Amazon jungle where he had been doing research on both a way to kill without being detected and a way to extend his own life through the use of various plants? This is both a thriller and a love story. There are excellent characters who are well developed by the author. I enjoyed this one, so it gets a thumbs up.