My Review:: The Prince of Patliputra by Shreyas Bhave

The Prince of Patliputra (Asoka trilogy, #1). by Shreyas Bhave
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Historical fiction is one of my favorite genre right along side mythological fiction and thrillers. The bar for Indian historical & mythological fiction is quite high with authors like Ashok Banker, Amish Tripathi, Ashwin Sanghi making this their forte.

Shreyas Bhave in his debut book The Prince of Patliputra (Asoka trilogy, #1). stands up and asks to be counted among those illustrious names mentioned earlier.

Ashoka Maurya is a historical figure whose life is shrouded in mystery for the contemporary Indian. The man who is honored by India with the Ashok Chakra, the Ashok Stambha named after him remains an enigma. Shreyas Bhave has embarked on a journey to part some of the curtains surrounding this enigma with his ambitious 3 part trilogy chronicling the journey of this mighty warrior turned pacifist Buddhist King which turned a 1 among the 100 children of Samrat Bindusara into the 3rd Chakravartin Samrat of the Maurya Dynasty and man who took the Maurya kingdom to unprecedented heights.

The Book 1 starts strong, the story flows smooth from page to page, chapter to chapter. The action never ebbs, you never get the feeling that this is a debutant author and I can pay no higher compliment to the author other than saying that "You, my friend have arrived in the annals of Indian literature"

I strongly recommend to readers who like historical figures and historical fiction.

My Review :: The Revelation Code by Andy McDermott

The Revelation Code by Andy McDermott
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

he Revelation Code by Andy McDermott

Got my hands on a ARC courtesy of Net Galley. My humble thanks to the publisher & author for making this avaible to me in exchange for a honest and unbiased review.

Now, since I read the last two books in this series back to back I have a better understanding of the relationships between the two main characters. Wilde and Chase are back and this time they are dragged back into relic hunting unwillingingly when a crazy evangelist kidnaps Chase in order to force Wilde to work for him. He's sicced on Wilde and Chase by an older foe one whom they thought was put away a long time ago.

We also see the return of Mossad agent Jared Zane in this book. He's becoming a replacement in the Wilde-Chase team for Henry Castille. At the end of book#10 it was revealed that Nina is pregnant and the new book picks off a couple of months after the incident in New York with the escaped Nazi.

The story revolves around the coming of the end of the days when the 4 Angels from Euphrates are released as foretold in the Book of Revelation. Ezekiel Cross - the main baddie, comes across one of the angels in the marshlands for Iraq and seeing the chemical gas released from the Angel when it explodes while under fire from the Iraqi gunship has a revelation that he is chosen by God to bring out the coming of the 7th Angel and the day of reckoning.

The story moves along typical of a Wilde/Chase story, Chase escapes, finds Nina, helps her out, baddies set off a sample of whats to come, Wilde/Chase try to head them off, the bad guys look like winning and then Wilde/Chase pull out a amazing out of the blue stunt involving all the set pieces laid out by the author in advance and in the process causing untold destruction of property while finding a new archeological site of extreme relevance.

In this book, Wilde & Chase find the Tebernacle from the time of Exodus containing the ten commandments, the rod of Aaron, the manna from heaven and the 4th angel in the temple of God containing 24 chairs of elders surrounding the chair for God. I think the Book of Revelation was a moot point here, the purpose would have been better served if Andy McDermott had gone with the quest for the Tebernacle with some fictional history revolving around it rather than the Revelation quest.

The quest seemed very easy, the deciphering of the codes involved nothing more than a map, some locations from the book of revelation and viola super archeologist Wilde finds it immeditately, in a course of 2 days she finds all 4 angels. The threat from the angels was plausible, but never really was there any doubt that the plot would be stopped in time. The only intriguing twist was the emergence of an older villain from the previous books. Too bad the character did not go anywhere.

I would rate this one from McDermott a 3 star. The story worked but looked like the same old, stuff done a hundred times before in the previous books.

My Review:: The Pursuit by Janet Evanovich & Lee Goldberg

The Pursuit by Janet Evanovich
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Fox & O'Hare are back for their 5th adventure. This time the book picks up from the cliffy at the end of book 4 where O'Hare arrives to find Fox missing. Apparently our thief extraordinaire has been kidnapped.

What the kidnapper fails to realize is where Fox goes, O'Hare chases, pretty soon our dynamic duo and their group of misfit geniuses are working to stop a bio terror threat with a aim of making money. They meet with a villain prone to theatrics but whose sense of fair play does not exist at all, who will double cross them as soon as his purpose is served and who is using them as a pawn in this own game of one upmanship OR is he???

The collaboration between Lee Goldberg and Janet Evanovich is pretty amazing, the books are furiously paced and the plot moves along without getting side tracked. There is enough character development within the story for the user to keep wanting more. The chemistry between the lead pair positively sizzles but the auxiliary characters have enough page time as well.

All in all Evanovich & Goldberg have delivered another winner here.

My sincere thanks to Net Galley, the publishers Headline and the authors Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg for making an ARC available to me in exchange for an honest and unbiased review.