
Antony and Cleopatra
Book
The epic story of one of the most famous love affairs in history, by the bestselling author of...

Someone Else's Skin
Book
Winner of the Theakston's 2015 Crime Novel of the Year, and a 2014 Richard and Judy Book Club...

Notorious Prisons of the World
Book
The first prisons were in the dungeons of empires and castles, places of neglect and sheer oblivion....

Gwennie's Diary: A Kiwi's World Tour to Yorkshire 1939-40
Book
In 2003, a heavy parcel posted from New Zealand arrived at a bungalow in Rawmarsh, Near...
Borst: Ordering of Time (Paper)
Book
This book is a concise history of the use and interpretation of time, written by one of the foremost...

Elizabethan Espionage: Plotters and Spies in the Struggle Between Catholicism and the Crown
Book
In the wake of the 1588 destruction of the Spanish Armada, English Catholics launched an ingenious...

David McK (3540 KP) rated Angels and Demons in Books
Jul 4, 2021
And, like, I'm sure, many others, I actually read that sequel first, only later discovering it was such (although, admittedly, not a direct sequel) and going back to read the first on the series.
This is the one largely set in and around Rome, with a high-tech ticking time-bomb counting down in Vatican City as the Cardinals all meet to elect a new Pope following the death of the previous incumbent of that role. It also makes lots of the (supposed?) divide between religion and science, drawing on lots of conspiracy theories and bringing back into the realms of popular culture that old secret society, the illuminati.
I have no problem with any of that, and I do like a bit of derring-do, mystery and romance, but even I found it hard at times to swallow some of the outlandish scenarios and set pieces of this novel - I think, for me, the icing on the cake was the surviving-a-jump-out-of-a-helicopter-without-a-parachute bit towards the end!

Heather Cranmer (2721 KP) created a post
May 8, 2021

The Jetsetters
Book
When seventy-year-old Charlotte Perkins submits a sexy essay to the Become a Jetsetter contest, she...

Shield of the Rising Sun (Path of Nemesis #3)
Book
The perfect next series for fans of Bernard Cornwell and Simon Scarrow War still rages at the...
Roman Empire Marcus Aurelius Commodus