103 of 112 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Another winner--why do I even doubt?, June 23, 2009
Yes, I doubted, very briefly. I'm ashamed. It's not that The Doomsday Key doesn't start off in a readable and totally entertaining manner. It really does. Rollins has what he does down to a science by now. He quickly reintroduces the main players (a few of whom we haven't seen in a while: Rachel Verona and Seichan) and establishes their relationships with each other. In addition to the ladies above, all the main Sigma players make their appearance, but as usual not all of them are heavily featured on this adventure. Seichan fans rejoice, she has a major role and experiences tremendous character development in this novel.
After the characters are reestablished, (again, as you'd expect) the action starts. A motorcycle chase here, a shootout there, a dash of international travel. Now, I love James Rollins with all my heart, but these opening salvos--while very well-written--felt a little... generic. My moment of doubt.
Happily, it didn't last long. Once Rollins set the main plot in motion, all such thoughts vanished. Seriously, WHAT was I thinking? For me, things really kicked into high gear with the introduction of a new character, Professor Wallace Boyle, whose lecture on peat bogs thrilled me to my soul. I know, peat bogs, who'd a thunk it? But again, that's Rollins' gift. He must look at the world through curiosity-colored glasses; he can find the wonder in the most unlikely of places and subjects. And even more brilliantly, he manages to string together a laundry list of disparate fascinating topics into the plot of a tight, tense thriller. And he does it again and again.
I know I'm being very, very vague about the plot. It would be a shame to give too much away. The central plot revolves around a plague from the past and a plague of the future: hunger. As characters in the novel expound, there will soon be a tipping point where there are far too many people on this planet to feed. Who gets to choose who lives or who dies? If you had the power and resources to make the hard choices, what would you do "to save the world?" And would you be a hero or a villain?
It is the exploring of the above questions that entails ancient artifacts, hidden rooms, booby traps, prophecies come true, missing bumble bees, miracle-performing saints, love triangles, the final resting place of Merlin the wizard, polar bears, teddy bears, and the world's healthiest apple. And I didn't even give you a hint of the real shocker!
A lot of thrillers make the goal, save the world, whatever, and end abruptly. Not so here. There was a nice... cooling down period after the action ended. It's a chance to check in with all the major characters, and a chance for Rollins to leave us with another of his signature cliff-hangers. This one isn't as brutal as some he's written, but those invested in the series will be left with a question to keep them wondering for the coming year.
A final note: Is it wrong that the author's afterwards have become my very favorite part of these novels? This may be the longest one yet (And for God's sake, DON'T read it before you finish the book!), and I am staggered by how much true stuff was worked into the novel. I mean, pretty much every too-amazing-to-be-true fact was, in fact, true. James Rollins, you rock my world!
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Read The Books In Order, July 4, 2010
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
The reading of this series needs to be done in the correct order to fully understand the background of the main characters.
An experimental farm in Africa where there is a massacre of all the staff and refugees in the farm. A member of the staff was the son of a US senator and the Sigma Force was given the task of investigating what happened. Monk Kokkalis, member of the Sigma Force, was about to interview the colleague of the senator's son, when a group of assassins killed the colleague and blew up his laboratory.
In Italy, an archeologist was murdered in a church and a subsequent explosion injures a Vatican official he was supposed to meet there. Rachel, a niece of the Vatican official, finds an ancient artifact hidden by the archeologist before his death. Fearing that nothing will come out of the subsequent police investigation, Rachel sends a message to Cmdr. Grey Pierce, asking for help to uncover the truth.
Grey was on the way to Italy to shadow Seichan, a deadly woman who has tried to kill him as well as helped him in the past. A common link to thess events were genetically modified food crops and the Doomsday vault containing seeds that can be used to grow new crops in case of a world wide catastrophe.
Three storylines interwoven in a very interesting book but I still wish that I had read the previous books in this series to understand the truer picture.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A fun and interesting thriller, June 23, 2010
This is my first James Rollins book, and I am really pleased with what I have read. I wanted an entertaining and suspenseful novel for my beach read, and this book delivered just that. Since I never read any of Rollins' works before, I was unfamiliar with any of the characters or the Sigma Force, but that did not hinder my understanding of the plot line. Most of the characters are somewhat generic, even in terms of their idiosyncrasies. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but I can see how they might become tiresome after the readings of a few more of such novels.
This novel has a very strong "Da Vinci Code" feel to it - an ancient secret that has been hidden for millennia is being pursued by a secret organization that is bent on destroying the World, or at least our idea of the world. The conspiracy, of course, involves the Catholic Church and the Vatican, although to Rollins' credit he doesn't try to unnecessarily malign this institution. In fact, the novel has a mildly favorable take on the Catholic Church and some of her venerable saints. Rollins is also very forthright about which parts of the book are completely fictional and which ones are based on historic facts. A brief list of the sources of some of his ideas is given at the end, and I felt that the book actually had some good educational value.
My biggest problem with the story are the several themes and secondary plot developments that seemed unmotivated and gratuitous. Some of these might be relevant from the point of view of the larger Sigma Force series, but others seemed to be put there just because Rollins thought they were cool and would have added to the thrill factor of the book. These things are a minor objection though, and as long as you don't try to overanalyze what you read you will probably not be too bothered by them. Overall this was a fun and interesting thriller, with some educational value to boot.
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