Nora has a pretty good life - yes, her brother is still dead and her parents are still withdrawn into their own self-absorbed worlds, but she has made a new family of sorts, with bright, charming, boy-wonder Chris and his lovely, capricious girlfriend Adriane as her best friends, and moody, quiet, scholarly Max as her boyfriend. She also has an engrossing translation project for a local professor to strengthen her link with Chris and Max - while they work on translating the "important" parts of an ancient mystical document the professor is obsessed with, Nora translates late 16th century letters from a young woman, stepdaughter to a great magician - busy work to the professor, but more and more fascinating to Nora. When her translation of the letters leads to a new discovery, she never expects it to end with the professor insane, Chris dead, Adriane catatonic and Max gone and branded a murder...but that's what happens.
And now Nora is trying to discover the truth, to figure out what happened the night that ended in blood, and to prove Max innocent. With the help of Chris' cousin Eli, a recovering Adriane, and her own ability to translate the letters of a long-dead girl, Nora finds herself in Prague, caught up in a deadly conflict over the Lumen Dei, a machine believed to tell the word of God, with people on both sides of the battle willing to kill her for the information.
**Spoilers contained herein**
This novel does a good job of building up the suspense bit by bit until the intensity is...intense. Nora is believable as a teenager trying to hide from grief while also charging into danger out of a belief that what's right can protect her, and the twists and betrayals definitely keep the reader on the edge of the seat, but there are some things I found hard to buy. None of the reviews I saw mentioned having any difficulty with believability, but here are some things that bugged me: - her parents let her go out of the country without their supervision so soon after she discovers the multiply-stabbed body of her best friend? Yes, they are still caught in their own grief traps over the death of their son, but really?
- And Adriane's parents let her leave the country after she'd been catatonic in a mental hospital after witnessing her boyfriend of 2 years get stabbed to death right in front of her? What the hell kind of parents are these?
- And the ending seemed somewhat out of left field - OK, I get that Max has been trained from an early age, but he gave no real signs that he was unhealthily obsessed with the research and the machine? No one suspected anything, ever?
- Also, blood is what makes the machine work? And Nora's blood, specifically just happens to be so powerful because of her affinity with Elizabeth who died 400 years before?
- Also Adriane was sure that Chris was really in love with Nora and so decided that hooking up with Max was OK for that reason?
Well, that last one seems like it might actually be probably in a teen's mind (or an adult's, as well).
No comments:
Post a Comment