I picked this up for a pittance on sale, having read and enjoyed Relic and Reliquary many years back. I've not read the others in the series and only have dim memories of prior events.

The plot is fairly ridiculous, with a potential involvement of the devil rapidly becoming obviously not satanic in nature, though still remaining pretty out-there in terms of ludicrousness. The motivation seems so unlikely that you have to laugh: they really went to all that trouble for that..? There's an entirely superflous subplot involving a preacher and a journalist that drags the page count ever higher. Pendergast is too clever for his own good and seems to make some pretty wild yet correct leaps of thought: a horsehair resolves the entire plot for Pendergast (even on re-reading it doesn't really seem plausible). There's also a few weird errors for something that seems heavily 'researched' (they mention a character playing 'snooker' in a billiard room using only red and white balls - well that's billiards).

Despite all that I actually quite enjoyed it. Pendergast and D'Agosta joined together make a fun combination and it's a quick (though long) read. The action scenes, especially the finale are grand in scope and it just borders on the bizarre enough to be fun.

If I found the other books for the same price I would happily fork out $5 but I'm not going to purposefully hunt them down.