The Einstein Prophecy

Short and Sweet: I will echo the Angels and Demons-esque feel; [b:The Einstein Prophecy 24429934 The Einstein Prophecy Robert Masello https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1434549503s/24429934.jpg 44017762] weaves from the ancient good vs evil story of Saint Anthony, against the backdrop of WWII. While the opening was strong and the plot idea riveting, it suffers massive setbacks from plot holes, forced storyline progression, and a somewhat scattered conclusion. Also, Einstein. Literally. [b:The Einstein Prophecy 24429934 The Einstein Prophecy Robert Masello https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1434549503s/24429934.jpg 44017762] opens with a nice pull: Lucas Athan, part of the Cultural Recovery Commission, is sent in to recover artifacts stolen from the Third Reich. He???s tasked with recovering an ???ossuary??? (coffin) that the Reich was particularly invested in obtaining. Once recovered, it???s brought back to Princeton for further investigation, and with it comes the ~exotic~ Simone Rashid, whose work revolves around breaking the mystery of this ossuary.This had all the elements I like - an ancient relic exhumed from the depths of the Sahara Desert, pried open to reveal strange artifacts that bring about unbelievable happenings. But unfortunately, this book fell short in a myriad of ways, enough for it to take a full eight days to me to finish. Plot holes, mixed with forced narrative, forgotten points, and piecemeal action - These were my biggest issues. Often, action would happen, begin to reach a climax, before abruptly cutting off to the next chapter. This happened all the way up until the actual plot began to tighten to a conclusion. It was frustrating, feeling myself wrapped up in these character???s situations - will Simone make it out of the ship alive? Will her father make it? Does Lucas survive the shrapnel? - only to have it cut off and wrap up in the next chapter, calmly, delivered to you like the evening newspaper. The lack of urgency lost my attention. Even when the Germans violate a huge international law via the Geneva Conventions, the whole situation is glossed over. The plot holes seemed to go hand-in-hand with the forced narrative. I didn???t start to notice this until action for the story as a whole began to pick up. For example, after the ossuary is obtained and shipped back to the States, the military feels its importance to the Reich needs to be understood. So they enlist Lucas (plausible) to study the ossuary with one other expert in the field (plausible) when Simone barges in (slightly non-plausible, but I???ll take it) and it???s set up in a public museum (really) where anyone can go in or out (uh, okay) where an infiltrator is then able to slip in at night with no security (are you kidding me) and mess with the ossuary itself. And this is also an example of forced narrative - no military interested in an item like this would leave it unsupervised in a public place. But because of these non-plausible situations, the story now has problems to solve and continues on. Personalities change to suit the narrative, and this was seen the most often with Lucas. This became obvious to me when his otherwise tempered personality inexplicably changes during a dialogue segment of a pivotal chapter. I was left saying to myself, ???Lucas wouldn???t respond to that man this way, especially when he???s doing Lucas a favor.??? It was small things like that, that jostled the delicate framework of a story and yanked me right out of it. Insta-love. Yes, this book has it. It went from ???I notice him??? to ???I batted my eyelashes because he???s ~so handsome~ and whoops we???re embracing oh would you look at that we're in love teehee”. Like [a: Robert Masello 201369 Robert Masello https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1431026378p2/201369.jpg] decided halfway through that these two characters should get together, so we're suddenly hit over and over with their attraction. Far, far too much poetic philosophy that waxes on for pages and pages, especially during Einstein???s chapters. I started skipping these passages; aside from offering (from what I could see) little-to-no significance to the story???s progression itself, it was massively annoying. Similarly, I struggled to find a reason for Einstein???s presence in this book. What exactly does he provide? What does his viewpoint offer? The answer I was left with was ???very little???. His chapters are mostly waxing poetic and studying. The ending that revealed that he???d been used as an instrument for the demon???s destruction of mankind via the atomic bomb was a good one, but it fell flat in the face of previous chapter???s worth of absolute fluff. Even after the conclusion, I was left with way more questions and almost no energy to care about the answers. The latter 25% of the novel picks up, and only then did I become fully immersed to the end. If only the whole novel had that energy, that kick, it would not have been such a thing to slog through. I have not read [a: Robert Masello 201369 Robert Masello https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1431026378p2/201369.jpg]'s other work, and I certainly haven't written it off yet, but unfortunately after reading [b:The Einstein Prophecy 24429934 The Einstein Prophecy Robert Masello https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1434549503s/24429934.jpg 44017762], I will be more cautious in the future.

Executive Summary: This book was alright, but nothing really special.Audiobook: Christopher Lane was quite a good narrator. He spoke clearly and with good inflections. He also did some decent accents for the characters of the book. If you're going to read this book (something I'm a bit iffy on), audio is a good option.Full ReviewThe description of this book was a bit misleading to me. I saw “young army lieutenant Lucas Athan recovers a sarcophagus excavated from an Egyptian tomb” and I'm thinking ancient Egypt, pyramids, mummies, etc.There is none of that. Instead the sarcophagus is thought to belong to a Christian saint. Wait What? And if that's not strange enough, half this book follows Einstein around. Much of his parts felt completely unnecessary to the plot. I'm not saying he's an unimportant figure in the story. His name's in the title after all. I just don't really get why so much time was spent on his daily life. If anything this book makes me want to pick up a biography on Einstein. It's the second fictionalized version of him I've read. The other was in [b:Cryptonomicon 816 Cryptonomicon Neal Stephenson https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327931476s/816.jpg 1166797], which I found far more enjoyable.The plot and the characters apart from Einstein (and other fictionalized versions of historical characters) were largely unmemorable. The story was pretty standard thriller, but at a much slower pace than I generally find for good thrillers.It's not a bad book, It's just not a great book either. I'm not that well read in thrillers these days, but there have to be better options out there over this one. If you picked it up cheap like I did though, it's entertaining enough.