Customer Reviews

Tower

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

 

 

Few authors can be better equipped to write about the history of ancient Greece and Rome than Valerio Massimo Manfredi. Professor of archaeology at the university of Milan, he has carried out many excavations and expeditions in the Mediterranean region. He has produced many factual books on historical matters, mainly military and has still found the time to write several novels. This book is a real thriller.

2 thousand years ago a mysterious force hidden in an isolated tower in the Sahara desert, massacred a squad of Roman soldiers. There was only one survivor from the horrific attack, an Etruscan diviner Avile Vipanas. He later described the terrible being in the tower, and suggested ways in which the creature could be destroyed.

Just what is the malevolent being that slumbers in the remote tower? Who are the fierce desert dwelling Blemmyae seen by the ancient travellers. Do they exist or are they just figments of people's imaginations.

In an attempt to find the isolated tower and sole the mystery that has come down through 20 centuries, three men begin a journey into te hear of the Sahara. An archaeologist, a colonel from the Foreign legion and a priest. Why do these men from such different backgrounds feel the need to solve a mystery that has lived on for 2,000 years?

I just finished reading The Last Legion and, while it was far from great, it showed some promise.
So I thought I'd give this one a try.
Mistake.
This was quite the mishmash of ancient acheological adventure story, religious intrigue, science fiction and fantasy, all comglomerated in an unpleasant and unsatisfying soup.
None of the ideas are original but it could have been at least a passable adventure tale had it not bogged down in pointlessness and predictability.
My suggestion - avoid.

This book was OK but not brilliant. It as certainly an interesting premise and I had no trouble reading to the end but I wasn't as engaged as I had thought I would be. Perhaps someone else will enjoy it more than I did.

I can only presume some previous reviewers,are either not very intelligent or have not read the book properly.There are no aliens in the book,just the degenarate descendants of a once highly civilised people. The story has a great mystery at its core,a quest,adventure, and some romance,a very good read,for the more intelligent discerning person.

We all agree that this is a terrible book, perhaps the most frustrating thing I have ever read. Still, I learnt something. I did not know that Marconi had developed a directional deep space radiotelescope in the 1920's.

The Tower is obviously an ancient alien construction and the inference is that God is an alien, or at least his manifestations are directed by an alien earth resident (who appears to be calmed by the sound of little bells).

The alien takes the name of Cain, and implores us not to kill him, but we didn't need to bother because the alien spacecraft blasted him and his dracula-like tomb with an energy weapon in Chapter 14. Presumably he had outlived his usefulness, perhaps because monotheism in the Judeao-Christian form had been discredited.

Why did Cain need 7 tombs ? Perhaps he needed accommodation here and there while instructing certain people in the Sinai.

And what were the Blemyi ? Only alien creatures could live under the Saharan sand, ready to leap out with their little scythes when called upon to do so. Odd that a race with FTL travel (Manfredi says so) is afraid of fire, and only has little scythes for weapons. Perhaps the laser blasters got sand in them, or the plasma pistols did not make it through the matter transmitter.

I wished that I could have been beamed out of this terrible book. All existing copies should be pulped forthwith. We read to be 'transported' to other worlds, but Manfredi transports us into an unbelievable, improbable, meaningless heap of garbage, and scars the remainder of our lives by inflicting an unforgettable negative memory.

This is (imo) a supremely dreadful book. Its confusing plot, paper thin characters and laugh-out-loud dialogue, however, are no worse than can be found in the average Ludlum-type thriller. What truly lifts it to so-bad-you-can't-stop-reading status is the quality of the expository prose.

I could reproduce a representative example of Ruskinism run amok here (a sex scene, for example, so strewn with overwrought cliches as to defy parody), but why bother? On practically every page there is a passage that could be a finalist in the annual Bulwer-Lytton bad writing contest. As I meandered through its pages, I kept saying to myself "Retire the trophy, it can't get any worse." But it invariably did. That's what kept me going to the bitter end.

One might contend that this is a translation and the author may be suffering from the excesses of his translator. But note the translator's name. It's my guess that she is Manfredi's wife. So unless her translation was specifically designed to trigger a pre-nuptial agreement, I'd imagine that it's probably a faithful rendering of the Italian.