Customer Reviews

The Phoenix Egg

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Profound questions, engaging concepts, thinking processes, magic and miracles are all there in Richard Bamberg's new book. This is an action adventure book with a touch of science fiction and psychic mind magic. It's more then an engaging and entertaining read, it's an adventure that will have you turning pages for many pleasurable hours of reading enjoyment and wanting more when you're finished. The author can write! The premise is unusual. I recommend the book for your reading pleasure.

This is the first novel I've read by relative newcomer Richard Bamberg, and it will not be the last. Wonderful techno-suspense, it hits the ground running from the first page and doesn't let up. A flavoring of today's - and possibly tomorrow's - science make the book more interesting than those same old authors you've been reading. The characters are enjoyable, even the minor characters are interesting. Be the first in your neighborhood to 'discover' this fun read! Highly recommended.

The action in this "government coverup" thriller starts off at over 100MPH and accelerates much like a launch from a Cape Caniveral pad. In this page-turner, the author expertly and deftly fleshes out and develops the two protaganists, John and Caitlin, who are in possession of what just may be the most startling and important invention ever created. As they learn more about the Phoenix Egg, in the layered manner that an onion is peeled, and struggle to stay one step ahead of corporate espionage thieves, international assassins and agents of secret governmental agencies, we are drawn into the desperate world of John and Caitlin. I am a fan of Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt novels and heard this one would be like Dirk Pitt being in a Dean Koontz novel. Richard Bamberg's John Blalock is more interesting than Cussler's Dirk Pitt and the action is better described and faster pace. Blalock would kick Pitt's rear!

The Phoenix Egg delivers on the promise of its title - just because something is impossible doesn't mean it can't exist! Richard Bamberg has a knack for creating likeable characters and then chasing them from one compelling scene to the next with a buzz-saw combination of action and suspense. As he did with his equally exciting earlier novels "Emerald Eyes" and "Strega", Bamberg once again takes readers on a fast-paced roller-coaster ride for the mind.

A high-tech, high-intelligence thriller, The Phoenix Egg is a page-turning suspense novel of the highest quality. Characters are well-drawn and believable. Plot moves quickly. I could hardly put it down.

It's hard to enjoy a book much when you spend much of the readng time editing it in your head. Unfortunately, that's pretty much what reading "The Phoenix Egg" was like for me -- not a bad idea, but I couldn't help but find better ways to explore the premise of the book as I read. Word by word, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, I found myself fixing spelling, puncuation, and phrasing to improve on the story overall. Too bad they didn't do this work before publishing it, to save me the trouble and let me enjoy the novel.

It's not just misspellings, either -- though there are many of those throughout the book (you don't put airplanes in a "hanger," for example), that's at least somewhat expected for a small publisher like this. The bad puncuation, while distracting, could also be forgiven somewhat. What really got to me, though, was the poor sentence structure and paragraph construction. On nearly every page, I found ways to rephrase a sentence or two to make it stronger, or to convey the idea better. Somehow, Bamberg finds ways to make even the most high-octane action seem bland and flavorless, and the love scenes, which are supposed to be revelatory, come off as trite and predictable. It's a problem of how he phrases things -- using too many adjectives when simplicity is called for, then hedging his words when more depth is needed. It almost seemed like he was working against the ideas he was trying to express, limiting his palette to only a few word constructions.

I give him credit for a good idea, though. Even if it takes a while (almost half the book) to get there, the concept behind "The Phoenix Egg" is an interesting one, and could have been really enjoyable in the hands of a different writer. The plot, too, was fairly well structured, if imperfectly so. The book starts out at a running gallop and never really lets up much, with a great deal of action and suspense strung out before we even have an idea of what's going on. It works for the most part, though it did seem a bit far-fetched and frustrating to me how little there was to learn about the impetus behind all the action until much later. And by then, it was a little bit anti-climactic.

It starts out fairly simply...Caitlin Maxwell's husband is killed and her life is also in danger, because of something he was working on that she doesn't know about. She enlists the aid of an old flame, John Blalock, to help her survive and find out just what her husband's secret was before the folks chasing her, organizations from all over the world, find it. Blalock, in the years he and Maxwell were separated, has become something of an expert in black ops and investigation...all very convenient for Caitlin, who has need of all of his talents before their adventures are over.

The characters in "The Phoenix Egg" are on the thin side -- not as transparent as those from "The Da Vinci Code," but pretty cardboard nonetheless. The plot runs fast and hard but doesn't really establish a good steady pace. And someone really needed to go through the book with a fine tooth comb and pick out all the mistakes and things that could have been done better. This is a book with a great deal of potential. It was frustrating, and more than a little disappointing, to see much of that potential squandered. I usually think that saying a book needed a better editor is something of a cop-out when rating a book's quality, but in this case, it really fits the bill.

This could have been such a better book. As it stands, it reads more like a term paper, and I felt like the unfortunate grad student grading it.

Enjoyable read with truly memorable characters. The author has created a book that forces you to keep turning those pages. The Phoenix Egg is set in the immediate future and is as exciting as a Bond movie with characters that touch the human spirit with depth and devotion. The ending leaves you feeling satisfied with all the loose ends tied up and the plot twist unraveled. Definitely worth reading.

Caitlin Maxwell and her soon-to-be ex-husband own a technology company. While they're talking on the phone, Scott is run off of the road and killed in a car accident. Soon after, Caitlin finds herself being hunted by Japanese businessmen, French businessmen and the federal government. She discovers that Scott has left something behind that they all want, so she turns to an old friend for help.

The Phoenix Egg was written by Richard Bamberg and published by Invisible College Press. I didn't love this book, but I didn't hate it either. I think it has potential, but it needs a good edit. There are lots of sentences like this one in the book - "Him aimed for the center of the wall and squeezed off six quick rounds." At one point, the main character's name was wrong. The plot got lost in descriptions and technicalities a few times. I felt like these things detracted from the book.

THE PHOENIX EGG is great fun -- an action adventure novel that I read very quickly and did not want to put down. The page turning quality and the touch of the paranormal invite a comparison to Dean Koontz or perhaps John Case, though the book does not at all seem to be an imitation of Koontz or anyone else. THE PHOENIX EGG is a great find. I picked it up because I met the author and was curious. I bought it and stayed up late to finish it because it was a great read!

The action starts immediately. We get thrown into a scenario in which we do not know what is going on or why the bad guys are out for blood. Bamberg weaves an enjoyably tangled plot, with plenty of adventure and a touch of romance, before he finally unravels it all for us. I found myself at the end of chapter after chapter saying,"And then what," and putting off bedtime for a while longer. I highly recommend THE PHOENIX EGG if you want a good action adventure fix!

I haven't seen much by this author in the past, but I did a little research and found a few other items of note. This novel did surprise me in its technical details, action sequences, and a love interest that made me think. There are a few flaws the copyeditor missed, but by page 20 I was so involved that I stopped noticing them.