Book Review: The Last Oracle

The Last Oracle by James Czajkowski (James Rollins)
Release Date: June 2008
Publisher: Harper Collins
Audience: Everyone
Pages: 448
Buy the Book: Amazon
Book Rating: 2/5
JamesRollins.com








A bit of a hiatus for a couple of days my loyal non-existent readers. Anywho, The Last Oracle is the fifth in James's series which follows a group of soldier/scholars known as the Sigma Force. In this book Gray and his group of solder/scholars are not only following the bloodline and  historical trail of the Greek Oracle's of Delphi but also slowly uncovering a plot by a covert Russian group which threatens to destroy Europe and kill millions.


In this book there are four storylines, two main ones (Gray and his group in America/India & Monk and several Russian children escaping the covert Russian group) and two minor plotlines and my main complaint is that these storylines do not meld with one another, its like reading two separate stories that pass like two ships in the night. It wasn't until about 250 pages in or more that the connection between the two plots becomes apparent. Even after that, the main characters in the main storylines get thrown together only in the last 30 or so pages of a 400+ page novel. Further, I felt that the use of deus ex machina in the novel was a bit heavy handed as well.

Also, the 'archaeology' in the book just didn't work for me. Sure, yes, supernatural elements have exists in the genre since its inception, but I just didn't find the claims made in this book to be feasible. While this is a work of fiction, it is set in the real world and the fact that the author is putting me vis-a-vis the preternatural elements in the novel only serves to pull me away from the book.

Those elements aside, I commend him for actually doing fairly extensive research for the novel and, as far as building a story arc and likable characters, he is quite successful in this and other Sigma Force novels. However, I felt that the overall book was one of his weaker offerings. If you like all his novels, sure, give it a shot (I picked it up cheap with multiple discounts when Borders went out of business) but, otherwise, I would skip it as you aren't missing anything as far as the multi-book story arc of the Sigma Force is concerned (save two things that I am sure are recapped in his next book in the series).