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showell's review against another edition
3.0
Perfectly fine for a cold and dreary afternoon. It's been four years since I read tomb of Zeus, and I don't remember it, so the fact that this story happened first didn't throw me at all. I had just decided that instead of a mystery i had landed in a pleasant old fashioned Gothic romance when all of a sudden there were smugglers, a goddess cult, and a plot to kill Hitler. That garbled the ending a bit, but I really like the William Gunning character.
alexsian29's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.75
lottpoet's review against another edition
dark
lighthearted
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
threerings's review against another edition
2.0
I spent the first hundred pages of this book in a mixture of confusion and annoyance while I tried to figure out whether this was supposed to take place before or after the first book in the series. I finally figured out that it's set 2-3 years before the first book. If I were going to randomly set the second book in a series before the first one, I would at least make a note of it at the beginning of the book. The fact that this is a prequel also ruined much of the suspense for me. The only part of the book I found interesting was the potential romantic possibilities between Letty and at least three men in the small French town where it takes place. But having read the first book, I knew who she ended up with and who she didn't. So there went that. The mystery itself is confused and Letty doesn't really do anything to uncover it. She just sort of wanders along as various men with various motives steer her one way or another. The final revelations are confusing and all over the place. There's a smuggling ring, thieves, religious fanatics, plots to kill Hitler, and the murders are lost somewhere in all that. This read like a Dan Brown novel and was just pointless. I'm very disappointed after I enjoyed the first in the series. But this one lacks the focus on local culture and archeology that I liked in the first one. Letty does archeology in this book, but it's rarely mentioned other than "she worked until afternoon, and then went off to flirt with someone else." I don't what happened to the author, but it's quite disappointing.
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