Customer Reviews

The Alexandria Link: A Novel

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(38)
3 star:		(23)
2 star:		(21)
1 star:		(39)

 

 

With The Alexandria Link, author Steve Berry takes us on a search for the legendary lost Library of Alexandria which was assumed to have been destroyed but has in fact been preserved by a group known as the Guardians. We ride along with retired U.S. government operative Cotton Malone as his quest takes him from damp streets of London to a chateau in Vienna, from historical locations in Lisbon and the United States to a desert in the Sinai as he hunts for the document which could reveal a secret from the distant past which, if disclosed, could jeopardize the security of our modern world.

Berry has taken stories about actual historical characters like David Ben-Gurion, actual locations such as the Monastery of Santa Maria de Belem in Lisbon, old manuscripts, the works and conclusions of various scholars, the existence of an actual medieval society called The Order of the Golden Fleece, the fabricated correspondence between a couple of Saints and utilized these as the framework around which he has constructed of his story. For those readers who will immediately attempt to point out the historical discrepancies contained in this book, one needs to remember that The Alexandria Link is ultimately a work of the authors talent and imagination and this is why it is sold under the classification of fiction.

The one factual thing the book does point out (either wittingly or unwittingly) is that through the ages, religion has been used to incite wars, create economic chaos, disrupt the harmony that could potentially exist between peoples and nations, and ultimately has been the tool employed to satisfy the political aspirations and objectives of various individuals and countries.

As an entertaining distraction with which to satisfy your thirst for vicarious adventure, this book more than fills the bill.

I like a good conspiracy theory, but The Alexandria Link is based on the incredulous theory of Lebanese writer, Kamal Salibi, who postulates that the Hebrew "promised land" is not really located in the area of Israel, east of the Mediterranean Sea, but rather further to the South, along the eastern shores of the Red Sea. He further speculates that the Jews settled there (in western Arabia) and then sometime later immigrated north to Palestine, but somehow mysteriously forgot all about it. This conspiracy theory clearly aims to discredit the historical origins of Judaism and Christianity and The Holy Bible. In Mr. Berry's attempt to emulate a "da Vinci Code" style plot, he succeeds only in duct-taping his political conspiracy idea to Salibi's ludicrous theory; and like any two things duct-taped together and left in the light of the sun, it ultimately crumbles and falls to pieces.

Save your self the price of this book and more importantly, your time. The book drags, the characters are wooden, and the "factual" history (which I normally enjoy in this genre of books), is riddled with errors that will be obvious to anyone even slightly familiar with the local history. A poor Da Vinci code imitator.

I really don't care about whether the book has historical inaccuracies; that's why it's called "FICTION". But what I could not stand was the plot's complete lack of plausibility. The author is almost trying to mimic the formula of the success of the Da Vinci Code but fails miserably. Da Vinci Code succeeded because it was able to interwove the historical facts and fictional aspects and made them BELIEVABLE and entertaining at the same time. However, this book does neither. Characters are very stiff and shallow, often you don't understand why and what they're doing, and the interaction between the main character and his ex wife is so cheesy that it's like reading conversations between two junior high kids. Save yourself from wasting hours of your life by NOT reading this book.

Having read most of Berry's books, I was eager to read this one. It had an interesting sounding plotline about a topic that has not been the subject of that many fiction books - the Library at Alexandria.

Sadly, it took me over 4 months to finish the books. A good initial burst of excitement and writing bogged down by about page 100, and from there on it went downhill. Characters were never really developed, the plot was very convoluted and the ending seemed way to simplistic.

Luckily I was able to finish a few other books while working on this one. I think it is time of the author, whom I usually like, to take a bit of a break and come back with a much stronger effort next time. If not, it will be my last time reading his novels.

I was listening to the audio book version that I checked out of my local library and got through about 3.5 cds before I called it quits and returned it. Really glad I did not waste $ on this one. I'm a big fan of the thriller / spy / mystery genre but this book was a real let-down. The strong anti-Israeli bias of the author left a really bad taste in my mouth. Not recommended!
If you're looking for a good book in the same vein try The Echelon Vendetta by David Stone or The Collectors by David Baldacci.

I'll give Berry three stars for writing a fast-paced, over-the-top adventure. He must be hoping someone will make a movie out of this, because only in film could something like this happen. But wow, what horrible biblical research. These authors like to talk how they travel around the world to research their novels, but spend five minutes on the religious part.

His character, a bible "expert" makes outlandish claims like no archaeological finds have been made in Israel, nothing remains of Solomon' s Temple, and only a few people understand ancient Hebrew. All of these things are untrue. Plus there are the unsubstantiated claims that the Bible was changed repeatedly over time by various unknown peoples. All of his biblical "contradictions" took about five minutes of research to resolve. No, there aren't two Genesis accounts. One is an overview and one focuses in on one creation event (man). If his character was such a Hebrew expert, he would know that the Hebrew concerning the different animal pairs in the Noah account each refer to different, specific animal types. Where did Cain find a wife? If you actually read Genesis, you find the time scales are left open, that Adam & Eve had many kids, and not a lot of details are given. See The Genesis Question: Scientific Advances and the Accuracy of Genesis if you're interested in a serious look at Genesis.

So Berry, and his characters, use this "scholarship" as the basis for the fringe theory that claims Old Testament events occurred in Saudi Arabia, not Palestine. Thus everyone is fighting over the wrong land. To believe this one must: 1. Ignore decades or archeological finds; 2. Believe there were thousands of people over centuries engaged in a grand conspiracy to change the Bible and obscure history; 3. Ignore extrabiblical books and most importantly, 4. You must forget that the Old Testament was already in use during Jesus' time, so how did the Christians manage to change it without the Jews noticing after the fact? And let's add, did the Jews just wake up one day in Jerusalem and think it was the City of David and forget about another one?

There was one good observation in the book, why can't anyone find evidence of the Exodus? In this case, there is rational, fact-based theorizing that locates the Exodus in Saudi Arabia, and it doesn't require conspiracies and rewriting every ancient text including the Bible. See The Miracles of Exodus for more on that.

Making a mad dash for the Oregon coast to escape the heat, _The Alexandria Link_ caught my attention in a local bookstore. (Sorry, Amazon.) I had read his The Templar Legacy: A Novel, and I was intrigued by the plot - what if the texts from the destroyed library at Alexandria survived? What gems of literarure, history and philosophy would we discover? Barry takes the premise further - how might a clearer understanding of ancient history influence the Middle East today? What if the "Promised Land," source of so much strife and bloodshed, wasn't in the Levant, but elsewhere?

Cotton Malone, the protagonist from _The Templar Legacy_ returns, this time with his ex-wife in tow. The plot is complicated, and intrigue and double-crossing abounds, as Barry tries to suprise the reader and keep them off balance as characters double and triple cross each other. The action is fast-paced, and the clues are intriguing. However, the geography of Washington, DC is poor, and Barry's explaination of historical events are thin. Borrowing from Dan Brown, the chapters are short, intentionally leaving you hungering for more as the focus of the story hops from one competing group to the next, each racing to either recover or destroy an ancient text that would change the nature of politics in the Middle East forever.

Even with the suspension of realism that I reserve for these sorts of stories, I wasn't buying Barry's premise. That both Arabs and Jews would work together to supress the mystery document was a reach; the series of impossible situations that Malone found himself in - and that he managed to get out of - continued to stretch the credible, and the writing itself was a pale comparison to others of the same genre. For want of something better to read, this would do. Otherwise, I'd pass.

While the action was okay and moved along, the characters never enter the magic place where you care about them. You keep hoping this will happen, but the ennui is relentless. The end of the book is highly forgettable. I know this because I read it last week and can't remember the end! I do not go to movies. I read and buy much more pleasure when I buy a book. I am sorry I bought this one. I think it is a way to capitalize on The DaVinci Code stuff. (At least that was interesting and semi-educational.

If this had been written by a person of Arab or Muslim descent, it would probably be in the non-fiction section. Reading Mr. Card's review shows how disturbing this book really is. Especially since it is essentially the narrative of the Islamic jihadist. In reality it was the Jews in Israel that were fighting against well-equipped Arab armies. The Israelis had fewer fighters, less powerful weapons (including no heavy artillery in the start of the war) and were not backed by any other nations. They were self-reliant and this is one of the reasons they defeated the Arabs in 1948 and again in 1967.