The Covenant of Genesis

Mystery, international intrigue, a militant religious group dedicated to keeping a secret reminiscent of The DaVinci Code- what’s not to like? I enjoyed the first part of the book, but began to tire of the nonstop cliffhangers and last-minute escapes from certain doom. A lot of adventure books these days tend to the cliffhanger at the end of each chapter to get you to keep reading, but by the end of this book I was exhausted. Seemingly every single encounter between our intrepid heroes and the forces of evil (not much nuance to these two-dimensional characters) involved page after page of life-and-death decision making and often unnecessarily graphic violence. I’m not a squeamish person, but by the end of the book I found the nonstop stomping, shooting, stabbing, and blowing up to be almost comic. It might be just the thing for someone looking for a book that reads like a blockbuster adventure movie; I prefer a little more thoughtfulness and dimension. It was an OK read, and I may return (later. much later.) to the series from which it comes, but for now I need a rest.

I have actually been wanting to read this installment in the Nina Wilde/Eddie Chase series since my first taste of the series back when The Cult of Osiris, or Pyramid of Doom as the copy was called in the US, came out in stores. Since Nina is basically considered a quack in her line of work at the beginning of the fifth book, it intrigued me as to what may have caused her fall from grace. So I was very happy to finally, since starting from the beginning of the series, get to read this fourth book.

I love McDermott’s work. Yeah I may complain about too much action sometimes and not enough puzzles to solve regarding each individual treasure of history that the characters are attempting to find, but all in all I am very happy with what this particular author has brought to the action/adventure/treasure-hunting/thriller genre. This book however, bypassed all of the ones in this series that I have read so far, and even ranks higher on my list than The Pyramid of Doom, which I mainly picked up back in 2010 or 2011 I believe because it had to do with Egypt and the Pyramids. This book brings to light so many different questions about religion and it also brings up some very good points to think on, e.g. How religion plays such a huge part in a lot of people’s lives and how they would be affected if told their God or Gods were based on a civilization which predated humanity.

While I do not condone bad guys destroying things, I could actually see the point of keeping the information and possible evidence found by Nina and Eddie hidden from the world. The implications that it would cause if put out in the open suddenly could be astronomical and bring quite a bit of destruction in its wake.

If I wasn’t hooked before on this series, this amazing fourth book has officially made me so. I am so excited to continue Nina and Eddie’s adventures in the novels already out and any possible future novels that this author decides to write.

Eddie and Nina return in their fourth over-the-top adventure. This is the best since the first installment with ample lost civilizations and global conspiracies and secret organizations. Sure, this and the ancient-ruins-in-Antarctica and the hidden-religious-secrets has been done before (i.e.

The Charlemagne Pursuit

or

A Skeleton in God’s Closet

). McDermott manages to craft an interesting story, though the action scenes sometimes are drawn out. Obviously this is fiction (and if you didn’t figure it out, the book says “a novel” on the cover). He gets some of his theology wrong when he claims science has often contradicted Genesis (see

The Genesis Question: Scientific Advances and the Accuracy of Genesis

) and implies the Big Bang was anti-religion (it was proposed by a priest and the atheists labeled it the Big Bang to make fun of it because it sounded so much like Genesis, see

Show Me God

and

The Creator and the Cosmos

). Nevertheless, entertaining. For another novel based on Genesis, try

Noah Primeval: Chronicles of the Nephilim Book I

.

Have loved all of the books in this series. Eddie is such a card and now Nina is as well.

Great book for a relaxing weekend.

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