The real-life Voynich manuscript has always been interesting to me, so I thought this book might be, too. It's probably poor etiquette to criticise without saying something positive, so I'll say that...well...actually It's really hard to find the fabled silver lining. This book reads like "The wizards of Skyhall" - there's a high level concept in there somewhere, too much exposition, generic characters, and even though that's not a lot, it's still too much for the author to pull together into a sum greater than its parts (I would have believed it if the book cover said the author was 14 or 15 years old, and would have certainly given extra stars for effort, plus, there are no typos) The story build up randomly, then sort of meanders into magic, confusing scenes, one-dimensional bad guys, and so on.