Random Musings

Like I posted previously when I reviewed Robert J. Sawyer’s WAKE, I rarely do book reviews.

So served up today at Random Musings is a new offering from Angry Robot Books (keep an eye on this imprint – they’re going to go far!) by author Chris Roberson.

Here is a blurb from Angry Robot’s site about BOOK OF SECRETS:

“Reporter Spencer Finch is embroiled in the hunt for a missing book, encountering along the way cat burglars and mobsters, hackers and monks. At the same time, he’s trying to make sense of the legacy left him by his late grandfather, a chest of what appear to be magazines from the golden age of pulp fiction, and even earlier.

Following his nose, Finch gradually uncovers a mystery involving a lost Greek play, secret societies, generations of masked vigilantes… and an entire secret history of mankind.

This tremendous modern fantasy is like The Da Vinci Code rewritten by the Coen Brothers. Already critically acclaimed worldwide for both his SF and fantasy series, Chris Roberson is at the very height of his powers. A lost classic, originally self-published by Chris as Voices of Thunder back in 2001, this revised, definitive edition, from the author’s preferred text, is published for the mass-market for the very first time.”

This blurb gets it bang on: The Da Vinci Code rewritten by the Coen Brothers (well, maybe not Fargo). I’m a huge Dan Brown fan and, like Brown’s fast-paced books, this is a cleverly written journey that occurs over a week. It’s quick, witty, and spell-binding. I couldn’t put this down, and considering I generally abhor first-person narrative, that says a lot.

I really enjoyed Spencer’s view of the world and we get a really nice glimpse with snippets of a past in which he is raised by his grandfather after the death of his parents. We truly see how this man has been molded by his loss and his upbringing.

There were two things that kept me riveted to this book and that was Spencer himself (a guy I’d like to shake hands with), as well as the mystery behind this book that people are willing to kill for. To boot, there’s espionage, betrayal, and a wicked-cool character called Tan Perrin, a former cat burglar who mentored Spencer.

I’m something of a mythology buff (my minor is in Classical Civilization) and I loved the tie-ins to the Prometheus plays by Aeschylus. Roberson has done a phenomenal job of weaving ancient myth into a story that is filled with enough intrigue to keep you reading to the very end.

Also deftly intertwined into this book are tales written by Spencer’s recently deceased (and estranged) grandfather. The stories are of The Black Hand, a vigilante-type hero wielding twin .45 Colt automatics who fights crime and injustice. And what Spencer learns is that these stories are not fiction and that his family history is tied to this mysterious cult of the Black Hand as guardians of an ancient secret.

I truly enjoyed this novel and I can only hope that Roberson will not leave it here. There is enough left open (including the fate of Spencer’s brother) for a compelling sequel and I, for one, would like to see more.

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