I wanted to like this book. The premise sounded really interesting. Unfortunately, the execution is horrible on almost every level.

Where do I begin...I'll start with the good. Chapters end on a very strong note, and the dialog is decent. I love Sam as a character; he serves as a great foil to Jake. In some places the descriptive passages are breathtakingly awesome. And the history is immersive.

But that's all it has going for it. It feels like this novel is being rushed to press before it's ready. The plot is far-fetched, the characterization is poor, and the editing seems nonexistent. Not a good combination.

For the most part the writing is mediocre. Sloppy editing plagues the book. Descriptive passages are frequently bogged down by the excessive use of passive voice. "Lending the only color was a bowl of fruit." There's too much rehashing of events that happened just a few chapters prior. And the similes...on one random page (216) I counted five, four of which occurred in the same paragraph and two of which occurred in the same sentence. Who up the publishing food chain let these amateur mistakes slide? It reads like a first draft.

As far as plot goes, the novel has a slow start -- especially on the Nazi side of things. Prior to chapter 10, the storytelling of 1938 is stale and quite boring. The Nazi storyline skirts the fantasy/sci-fi realm too much for my tastes in a historical fiction. Too many coincidences or convenient outs, both past and present, which had me rolling my eyes so much I feared they might get stuck like that. As the book approaches its climax, it turns into a farce.

The plot didn't interest me as much as I'd hoped. There's a serious story going on with the Nazis and a flippant present-day melodrama, two things that in my opinion don't work together. Don't go into this expecting an Indiana Jones-type thrill ride. It just never happens.

The present-day thread is the weakest part of the novel. It comes off as a really poor after-school TV movie. It feels like it was added as an afterthought to pad the book's length (or to appeal to a YA demographic). Suspension of disbelief? Yeah, throw that right out the window. And to top it all off, it was predictable. This coming from a reader who isn't good at metagaming.

Which leads me to my main problem in the book. With so much going on in both time periods, Dietrich doesn't devote much effort to character development. Don't get me wrong, I liked the characterization of the women in the book early on until I realized they're all essentially the same characters. Nor did Raeder or Hood have much development beyond their prior collaboration in Tibet. Both zoologists, both crack-shots, both have the same voice...only one's a Nazi and the other's a rich American playboy. And Jake, was he supposed to have a believable personality? The addition of point-of-view characters in the last third of the book worsens the problem.

In conclusion -- very far-fetched and not really all that interesting a book. To me, anyways. Fans of historical fiction might think otherwise. Dietrich weaves history into the text effortlessly, as I'm sure he did in his other novels. Sadly, he really missed the mark with this one.