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Gran Leon Books - The Eight
![The Eight]()
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List Price: $18.95
Our Price: $20.00
Availability: N/A
Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780345351371
ISBN: 0345351371
Label: Ballantine Books
Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 550
Publication Date: 1988-12-27
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Release Date: 1988-12-27
Studio: Ballantine Books
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Editorial Reviews:
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Computer expert Cat Velis is heading for a job to Algeria. Before she goes, a mysterious fortune teller warns her of danger, and an antique dealer asks her to search for pieces to a valuable chess set that has been missing for years...In the South of France in 1790 two convent girls hide valuable pieces of a chess set all over the world, because the game that can be played with them is too powerful....
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Trying too hard
Comment: It seems that the author was too committed to trying to tie chess and the number eight to everything in life regardless of how ridiculous the plot needed to be to make it happen.
Characters were pretty simple, and the "logic" explaining thier actions just didn't make sense much of the time. I certainly wouldn't want the book to be any longer, but I think many of the scenes needed to be drawn out and developed further.
Customer Rating:
Summary: An Entertaining Thriller
Comment: This novel flashes back and forth between two time periods: 1972 and the French Revolution. That can be disturbing to some, including me, but the author does handle it well here. The story revolves around a very mysterious chess service, and people that will do anything to get their hands on it. Along the way there are a host of characters who are entertaining and enough twists to keep the reader engaged.
This novel is certainly not the "Great American Novel," and I don't think the author had intentions of attaining that distinctions. But this novel does contain an amusing story that does keep the reader wondering what will happen next. There is a lot of historical "name-dropping" - but, well, it IS a historical period piece. What on earth would one expect?? Pick up most novels in the same genre and the same is true.
This was a nice read, though a bit dated in that it was written in 1988. I did like the description of Algeria and found the invovlement about chess very interesting!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great Read
Comment: Being number 366 to review Katherine Neville's THE EIGHT there isn't much left to say. I missed the original edition and bought it as a companion to the sequel THE FIRE.
The mystery/adventure requires constant attention to all of the chess moves and illustrations of the figure eight though out history and various cultures.
One of the best mysteries I've read in a long time and I knew nothing about chess. Now I'll tackle THE FIRE.
Nash Black, HAINTS and WRITING AS A SMALL BUSINESS.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Trite and lacking in depth
Comment: The Eight started out promisingly enough, but degenerated to the point of ridiculousness. The book has been compared to Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, but in actuality The Eight comes nowhere near that fabulous book. As I read, I hoped that Katherine Neville was writing a parody, but I guess not.
Where to begin? Overly contrived plot with more holes than Swiss cheese; really, really bad writing style with an over-use of adjectives and past participles; laughable sex scenes; too much historical inaccuracy; too much historical name-dropping, so much so that this novel read like an issue of US magazine (Catherine the Great, Napoleon, Robespierre, Voltaire, and many, many other historical figures are thrown in, sometimes gratuitously); and too much foreshadowing, is in, "little did I know...". The characters were extremely one-dimensional, and I absolutely loathed the heroine, Cat Velis. The book started off well enough, but I found myself rolling my eyes the further I read. I'm all for reading historical thrillers, if the plot is enough to draw me in, but this one didn't do it for me, I'm afraid.
Customer Rating:
Summary: An Unrewarding Slog
Comment: The good: excellent story.
The bad: poorly written. The clunky Thesaurus-driven prose can be tolerated, but not the wooden and puddle-shallow characters, the dreadful dialog and the absence of a driving and interesting narrative. And it's lonnnnnnng. Not recommended.
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