Customer Reviews

The Gaudi Key: A Novel

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This should have been called The Gaudi Code, as it is a clone of the famous Dan Brown(e?) bestseller. If you want to know more about Gaudi, but are too lazy to study real literature about him, of if you enjoy endless riddles that can only be solved by the protagonists, this may be for you, though the storyline is predictable and lacks credibility. For me it lost all attraction when the puzzles could only be solved if the two heroes confessed their never-ending love for each other.

If you never read Davinci Code this book would be a lot better. Unfortunately its Spains Davinci Code. Very similiar. Aside for that its very good. The characters are a little confusing at first, but once you get into it its good.

I love Antonio Gaudi's works -- they are so organic, his works flow, they are almost alive, especially his exceptional (unfinished) cathedral. Gaudi himself was a very unusual person -- introspective, reflective, religious, and it is said, fasted for 20 days before undertaking the design of La Sagrada Familia.

Whether they are secular or religious, Gaudi's works definitely transcend time.

Although The Gaudi Key can be summed up as an "interesting read", it does not always "flow" -- it is not built on the very best of foundations. Sentence structure could really be improved, as some of the sentences are annoyingly choppy. Like this. Plots are, in some places, a bit long winded.

I found the book and its main plot interesting, but the action was a bit too prolonged and uneven.

This is an excellent work, especially if you are a fan of riddles...a fan of architecture...a fan of mysteries.

The architecture described is by the world famous Spanish architect Antonio Gaudi. Hidden deep within his works (and in the location of his works) is a secret that will affect all of mankind.

The search for this secret and the murderous attempts by a secret organization to stop the search fuels the action. Then, the mixed motives (the enemy wants the searchers to find the secret that they cannot find) regarding the ultimate goal, all contribute to the mystery.

Not to be negative or to spoil a fascinating book, the ending leaves me wanting for more, but the search is really the joy in reading this book.

And, as is rarely the case in recent books of this genre, the authors really know what they are talking about and mention a few side details that are also worthy of further reading (including the stellar constellation DRACO - hint, read about the Cambodian temples; the statement "as above so below" - hint, read about the pyramids of Egypt AND about the Cambodian temples). Almost casually strewn throughout the book, as the breadcrumbs mentioned, are at least a dozen other mysteries worthy of further reading.

I had a copy of Antonio Gaudi's work with me as I read this book and I highly recommend doing that.

Edward Altmann

New Age History Thriller
The Gaudi Key is a New Age Mystery Thriller that centers on what did Jesus mean when he said, "........upon this rock I will build my church." Esteban Martin and Andreu Carranza then build a fun, complex jaunt through history concerning the church, cathedrals, architecture, secret societies, esoteric symbols and meanings, and many other New Age topics. They weave a tense, suspenseful drama around families and individuals who through the ages play a pivotal role in keeping the "Great Secret" hidden from the "Dark Side". From the time of Christ to today, the ancient secret brotherhood of the 7 Knights of Moriah have successfully guarded the "Great Secret" and its sacred object. Now the end time grows near and the powers of evil strike to unravel the secret and take possession of the object. It is all up to Maria and her boyfriend, mathematician Miguel, to figure out the Grand Master's puzzles and riddles in order to understand the Secret and keep the sacred object safe.
It is an interesting, although at times overwritten story, with many puzzles, riddles, innuendos, double entendres, and other metaphysical esoteric meanings. One must pay attention or you could quickly get lost in all the games being played.
Character development was OK for the scope of the book but could have been better. The evil portrayal was actually quite well done if a little too violent at times.
No gratuitous sex or language. Some extremely graphic violence with associated description. Not for the squeamish or faint of heart.
I would recommend this book as a hardback library book, or, better yet wait for the paperback. I liked the historical aspects of this book, and enjoyed the religious questions raised. Note of caution, the reader needs to pay attention our you WILL get confused and lost in the verbiage. It is an interesting tale but complex by its telling.

Skip this disjointed Dan Brown knock-off effort and go get yourself a nice Steve Berry novel. Totally unsatisfying and way too expository; you'll be lulled into the hum-drum and predictable plot when suddenly you'll be reading a chapter featuring the all-time most disturbing and gruesome torture situation I have ever encountered. I dropped the book in the trash; not even fit for donation! If you are squeamish, you'll be marked for weeks after reading just this one section; if you're discerning at all, you'll be yawning....zzzzzzzzz

If you're into DaVinci Code type stories you're likely to enjoy this novel. Lots of puzzles to be solved by the protagonists with a deadline fast approaching. As one reviewer said, the first half is a little slow but the pace picks up considerably toward the end with a rising body count, some good action sequences and it's all brought to a satisfying ending. Honestly, even though parts of it were slow (lots of back story and explanations of architectural symbolism, which I actually found interesting) it kept me hanging in there just to see what would happen next. I found it to be an enjoyable and entertaining read.

Gary Val Tenuta
Author of The Ezekiel Code
and the award-winning short story A Bite Out of Time - (A rock-n-roll vampire tale with a time travel twist)

We've had conspiracies involving Dante, the Templars, the Turin Shroud. What do we have left? How about Gaudi's lollypop of a Cathedral, the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona? Clearly there are tales within tales in that concoction! The man himself died under mysterious circumstances, but not so mysterious that a bit of spiritual conspiracy can't be adduced. And so we have The Gaudi Key by those Catalans, Esteban Martin and Andreu Carranza, where it turns out Gaudi was the master of seven knights sworn to protect some relic or the other from the depredations of Chaos, better known as the Corbel, who are determined to consign the planet into anarchy. One wonders then, why they limit themselves to what is essentially a provincial backwater. Why not London? Or Tokyo? Or even Paris? Why Barcelona? At any rate, Gaudi bequeathed the secret of the relic to a little chap, who decades later is falling into senility, and bequeaths it to his granddaughter. She is no ordinary woman, of course. In her will converge spiritual continua, and she'll lead us all into a bright future where the evil ones will be obliterated. But she can't do it all by herself so she needs her Fields Medal winning boyfriend to help. (How many Fields Medallists do you know that are good-looking, incredibly fit, socially ept and brilliant fencing champions to boot? Still, it's good to see a mathematician do something other than push his thick glasses onto his bushy eyebrows quoting theorems and twitching.) There's a lot of hokum in this novel, and would you believe it, the Templars make an entrance here as well. I guess some of the figurative puzzles in Gaudi's architecture have been put to good use in the book, and a visitor to Barcelona armed with the book may have some fun identifying them. Scarce recompense for plowing through nearly 500 pages of drivel, though.

I bought this book just before getting on a flight and found myself stuck with it for 10 hours en route to New York.
One of the main reasons I bought it is my fascination with Gaudi's architecture and biography - I have been to Barcelona several times and visited all the locations related to Antonio Gaudi. When I flipped through the pages in the airport bookstore I caught some nice descriptions of real locations I knew from Barcelona, and hints of an interesting plot (a mysterious order of knights dedicated to protecting a mystical object; some riddles intertwined in Gaudi's work etc.)

About 10 pages into the book, it was clear to me this is no masterpiece, and a dozen pages later I knew it was a big mistake buying it. The only reasons I kept reading were the hope that it would get better somewhere, the fact that it was the only book I had on the flight, and that I had already seen the movie that was playing on the airplane video.

In short, the writers try to create a mysterious plot which unravels as the story progresses, and match it up with various details from Gaudi's works and architecture, and biographical details from his past. They throw in an ancient order of knights who are the "good guys" and their enemies, an ancient order of "bad guys". They top it up with a couple of mathematical riddles that the lame "hero" tries to put together while he rushes with this girlfriend to escape the bad guys, and retrieve the mysterious sacred object in time to place it wherever-the-hell-it-needs-to-be-placed just in time for the dawn of a new era in Christianity.

while there are enough materials here to create a very good reading, the writers are trying very hard to make it appear like the Barcelonian counterpart of The Da Vinci Code, and fail miserably. The characters are unreliable and lack any depth, the good guys and bad guys are cartoon-like figures, and the "riddles" are boring. Even the storytelling technique is so lame that they have to break out of the story line and add a few segments of narrative that explain what happened in the past, instead of letting the characters discover it piece by piece, like a good adventure story should.

And the end is... well... embarrassing - describing the re-birth of a new Jesus in Africa, following the success of the heroes in find the whaddayacallit and placing it in the wherethehellwasit just in time.

I have suffered enough reading it... do yourself a favor and stay away.

"The Gaudi Key" (La Clave Gaudi) possesses the grandiosity of its subject's architecture, but lacks his whimsy.

Sometimes you can concoct a literary triumph yet not tell a story so well. Such is the case with Esteban Martin and Andreu Carranza's novel.

"The Gaudi Key," takes Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code," moves it to Barcelona, and then attempts to transform a potboiler into big literature. But the authors fail to match Brown's talent for penning the page-turner, and instead weigh their piece down with interesting, but unnecessary information.

Any story affirmatively linking Barcelona, its most famous architect, and the second coming of Jesus Christ is going to have a lot of explaining to do, and the resulting expository writing generates a book of considerable heft (430 pages).

The set-up involves a vicious conflict between the diabolical Men of Mensula and the Knights of Moria; the latter being an ancient Catholic order of warrior friars with which Gaudi was associated.

The knights are engaged in an age-old quest of squiring a surviving rock sliver from Solomon's temple to its final resting place in the Gaudi-designed Sagrada Familia cathedral, as preparation for Christ's return to earth.

If it sounds complicated, well, it is. And if it doesn't sound complicated, it still is.

And although the authors successfully guide the narrative's baroque machinery to a successful conclusion, the exquisitely embroidered scheme ends up stepping all over a story that is not uninspired in its origins.

Detailing the history and competing philosophies of the Mensulan and Morian orders is tackled via long character dialogues best omitted or at least reduced to something more essential and dramatized through story action.

Parsing them is a slog and their presence is augmented by the presence of still more as these well-schooled scribes hold court on all manner of esoterica, Greek mythology, Catholic mysticism, 20th-Century anarcho-syndicalism, and the Shinto religion (to name a few).

"The Gaudi Key" never practices what it preaches. The famed architect's hallucinatory vision and transcendent approach to life and art are lost in a tome that is constantly over-reasoned and overwrought, robbing the marvelously chosen topics of all their inherent magic.