A sometimes-dense but fast-moving tale of archeology and adventure.
In Teeguarden’s novel, an American graduate student goes on an archeological adventure involving the Knights Templar, the Mossad, and the Islamic State group.
Earnest Joshua “Masa” Bennett grows up digging in his grandparents’ backyard with his grandfather and dreams of becoming an archeologist. Now, the 20-something is hitting the books hard at the University of Arkansas and drawing connections that others missed, leading to the whereabouts of a lost treasure in the valley of Achor, near Jericho. Soon, young Joshua, along with teaching assistant Noa Lev and Mossad operatives Tal Ben-Ari and Avi Katz are scouring the Middle East for the lost treasure they seek. It’s a dangerous business involving agents of three of the world’s most influential religions—and they all want to take possession of Joshua’s obsession for their own reasons. As a Christian action thriller, a lot of the drama that Teeguarden offers will appeal most to readers who have extensive familiarity with the Bible; such knowledge makes passages such as this one feel more intense: “Noa traced the Jordan’s curve on the map, her finger steady. ‘The ‘shepherd’s crook’ ties Elijah’s mantle to John, maybe Jesus’ lost sheep parables—a thread from Melachim to the Gospels.” Teeguarden’s characters, and their motivations, sometimes feel less like real people than they do chess pieces, moved around according to the dictates of the plot. This aspect, though, is just as often offset by the author’s consistently neat and propulsive narrative, which recall some of Indiana Jones’ adventures as Joshua and his team draw closer to unlocking the secret of the scroll, which may involve a biblical figure: “His mind raced,” Teeguarden writes of Joshua early on. “The ‘valley of Achor’ was near Jericho, and the Copper Scroll’s ‘pillar’ could be a landmark—a rock formation, a stalagmite, something tangible.” Overall, the foundations for solid worldbuilding are put into place, and some readers are sure to want to know what lies ahead.
A sometimes-dense but fast-moving tale of archeology and adventure.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9798999106025
Page Count: 234
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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