cbaker8887's Full Review: Brad Kelln - In Tongues of the Dead
In Tongues of the Dead is not quite a The Da Vinci Code rip-off, but it is another in a long line of mediocre to poor novels trying to sponge off the success of The Da Vinci Code and the reading public's fascination with the mysteries surrounding religious artifacts.
The plot centers on a rare document called The Voynich manuscript which is purported to be the story of the Nephilim, a lineage from condemned angels who impregnated humans. The book is in a language that is unreadable and indecipherable and supposedly only descendants of the Nephilim can read it. One day an autistic foster child going on a tour of the Beinecke Rare Book Manuscript Library of Yale University appears to read from the book. A Vatican agent notifies his superiors who dispatch Father Benicio Valori to check out the claim. This leads to an unbelievably wild race among Vatican agents, Benicio Valori, and real Nephilim, to find the child, each for their own purposes.
The novel itself is quick paced and a fast read. It definitely does a good job keeping the reader's interest. The problem is the tale stretches credibility and there are some plot holes and rather convenient, for the writer, coincidences that make the novel a bit flat and lacking. Some of the characters are almost silly to the point of being ridiculous, which greatly detracts from the seriousness of the subject. The book becomes more farcical than entertaining by the end.
Overall this is at best a mediocre novel, but I would call it poor. At least the plot moves along fast enough to keep it from being tedious as well.
In the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University there lies a 400-year-old document that no one has been able to decipher. Twenty y...More at HotBookSale
In the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library of Yale University there lies a 400-year-old document that no one has been able to decipher. Twenty y...More at HotBookSale
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