It’s been five years since The Da Vinci Code triggered an avalanche of imitators–thrillers featuring codes and ciphers, arcane knowledge, and ancient conspiracies. To me, the book that most resembled it was Katherine Neville’s The Eight, which was actually written 15 years before the Code. Positing a thousand year old chess set with alchemical powers, and a larger Game with geopolitical implications, the book acquired something of a cult, and, after 20 years, a sequel.

The Fire finds Alexandra Solarin, a former child chess prodigy who gave up the game after her father’s murder, summoned to her estranged mother’s home in Colorado. Her mother is missing, but carefully encoded clues, and the arrival of several other people place her smack dab in the middle of the Game’s newest round, forcing her to decipher both the rules and the roles of others (friend or foe?) as she goes. The action moves to Washington, DC, Jackson Hole, Kamchatka, and back in time to France, the Sahara, and the Greek islands where we find Lord Byron and Tallyrand, among others, involved in the intrigue.

This sequel seems to me less successful than The Eight. Neville has done so much research that it slows the action, and I struggled to keep up. The rules of the Game remain unclear, and a half-resolved ending suggest that another volume might be in the works. Still, one could do worse than a book this brainy and ambitious. --John

From ICPL Staff Picks Blog