Review - "Of Beryl & Alabaster" by John Wolf
from Susan Haley
This is a book for the lover of puzzles. Are you challenged by the brain twisters in the Sunday paper or Sudoku for the advanced player? If so, the author will take you along while his two main protagonists twist through the far-eastern myths in search of the Beryl stone that magically displays the unsolvable solutions of the old Silk Road. Within the legends, are hidden treasures of unimaginable wealth in gemstones, guarded for generations by the mountain clans preserving their Royals.
The element of historical fiction emanates as behind these clans, still being fought today in the peaks and valleys of the Himalayans of Afghanistan, Pakistan and India, there seems to always be the obscure power of China. China, the one empire which has not completely fallen, strangled by its own obsession with power, but has progressed to being the nation that still controls the world from the same obscurity. China, where today, there is much new to shroud the crumbling relics of another time. Yet still, the Great Wall remains. In Mr. Wolf’s book you will venture behind and into those walls and myths. With still no real understanding of what went, and goes, on there. World leaders can’t figure it out.
Mr. Wolf has an uncanny ability with imagery and scene-setting. I begin at the edge of an ancient well. Instantly, I felt a hesitation at venturing farther and an ethereal feeling of choking on dust. It was that real! Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on which urges you tend to follow, I’m thrust into an odorous street in Dwarka, a slum of New Delhi, India. Before, I get adjusted to the new environment, bodies are dropping around me as I prepare to enter an old gem store. Suddenly, I find myself in a rather dull office in Washington DC where my soon to be co-protagonist is lamenting a failing love affair.
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The preceding is a necessary set-up considering this a rapidly moving plot that must get me to another house in London where the other co-protagonist, a genealogist, resides with his housekeeper who rules with an iron fist. This projection turns out to be paramount as I’m about to be launched into a pack of, again obscurely, renowned Global gem thieves. This does seem to be the case when a treasured and mysterious, long-missing and crucial gemstone surfaces from the underworld. Today’s Internet is a less than comparable line of communication. Now, we puzzle solvers must really get to work.
If you are intrigued by fast-moving, multiple-pieced mind games, Beryl is for you. If you are a Genealogy or far-eastern history buff, this is your book. If you have an ability to grasp onto numerous foreign names and characters from countries whose names no longer exist, I challenge you to solve this puzzle. If you are a lover of sequels because all your solutions come up wrong, I challenge Mr. Wolf to write one comparable. If you’re an esoteric like me, you’ll linger in the incredible imagery.
Susan Haley |
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Susan Haley is the published author of two books, several articles on networking, an award-winning poet, contract copy editor, and book reviewer for AME Marketing. She is a columnist for “The Florida Writer” the official magazine of the Florida Writers Association, and serves as Facilitator for the Sarasota County Chapter. The audio version of her novel “RAINY DAY PEOPLE” was recently awarded runner-up Finalist in the 2008 Indie Excellence National Book Awards. She also contributes a variety of editorials and excerpts of her work to various E-zines, newsletters, and local paper, and is founder and designer of a Spiritual website dedicated to Nature. www.sucarha.com |
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