(Hint to anyone searching for the "doomsday key"): Don't bother, & read something

Rating: 5.5/10

The Doomsday Key by James Rollins is nothing more than a typical spy novel. If you've already read The Da Vinci Code or any Dan Brown novel, then you can check this book off of your "read" list. In fact, there are far too many similarities between The Da Vinci Code (which was written in 2003) and The Doomsday Key (which was written in 2009....). Both novels have an attractive, and sexually promiscuous, male protagonist who has a complicated history and a need to involve himself in dangerous situations. They also have young, attractive, and delightfully fierce and emotionally unstable female leads; women who teeter between demonstrating badass inner strength/physical capabilities and who fall to pieces over their broken hearts and lonely lifestyles. The two texts also:

focus on the historical religious conflict between pagans and the Christian church,

use cheesily tantalizing and overly contrived spy language (although my impartiality to Dan Brown's Robert Langdon series usually allows me to forgive his transgressions in this area),

and (*MAJOR SPOILERS COMING*) have twists at the end where an old British man, who is obsessed with history, turns on the protagonist at the last minute and reveals his involvement in the "bad guy plot," as well as have the twist of the final treasure being a historically significant woman who has been talked about for centuries.

It seems pretty unlikely to me that all of these similarities could have occurred by happenstance. Although many of the traits mentioned above are characteristic of spy novels in general, many of Rollins' plot and character details are just so derivative of Brown's series of novels that I would find it hard to believe that he didn't read Brown's books and then simply adapt them into his own fictional world. Therefore, I stand by my earlier statement: if you have read The Da Vinci Code, don't even bother reading this book because you will essentially be reading a lesser version of a Dan Brown novel.

Now if I were to move past the copycat vibe that I get from this text, there are plenty of other things (both positive and negative) that I could say about it. First, I think I should mention that this text is the 6th book in a series about Gray Pierce. I read this book as a standalone text. Although it is possible to do this and still understand the novel (just as with the Robert Langdon series), I wouldn't recommend jumping into this book without reading its predecessors. If you only read this book, you will spend too much time catching up on background contextual details when it'd be more worthwhile to just focus on the plot (or would it?). The novel's pattern of constantly jumping from scene to scene means that it can take a while for a new reader to catch up with the characters' background stories. This storytelling technique often works quite well in films, but it does not have the proper effect in novels--films are fast-paced, and it is far easier to remember visual details over a 2 hour period than it is to remember textual details over a 2 week period. When there is a myriad of scenes throughout a book, the book becomes overwhelming, confusing, and eventually boring. In my experience, it wasn't until the last 50 or so pages that I was actually able to remember characters' names (and I even had to look up Gray's last name while writing this review!).

On a more positive note, the book does become more interesting when you get farther into it. The peat fire scene, bar meeting/shooting scene, seed vault bomb scene, and the sections where Gray & co. explored ancient sites were all dramatic and relatively intriguing. The problem with this pattern of interesting scenes is that stories that are truly worth reading aren't only considered worthwhile because of a few high action scenes, but are instead interesting for a wide variety of reasons. There are elements of Rollins' writing technique that lend interest to the reader, but these elements are not properly nor fully developed. As aforementioned, his tendency to move back and forth between multiple plotlines can be effective in getting readers intrigued, but it can also be clunky and confusing. I often found myself losing track of events and getting out of the mode of the story whenever a major shift occurred. Rollins' cliffhangers sometimes motivated me to keep reading, but I generally felt that his overuse of them caused them to feel cheesy, cliche, and made them lose much of their meaning. Another odd stylistic choice was the author's use of headings to separate the novel into larger sections (e.g. "First: The Spiral and the Cross," "Second: Fire and Ice," "Third: Seeds of Destruction," and "Fourth: The Dark Madonna"). I understand how the plotline correlates with these sections, but the headings really don't add any significant meaning to the story. They felt more like the author's note to himself--something he would have jotted down during the writing process so that he could keep track of where the story was going, as well as note particular themes or juxtapositions he wanted to focus on (in which case, he should have kept those notes to himself and left them out of the final edition of the book).

The last aspect of the book that stuck out to me was its use of historical information. Unlike the Robert Langdon series, the facts in The Doomsday Key didn't feel like they had a ring of truth to them. Even with Brown's books, there are moments when you doubt the validity of the facts he is using, but Rollins' story as a whole just didn't conquer that ability to believably weave truth into fiction. I did, however, appreciate the novel's attempt to address readers' questions about the story's use of historical information. At the end of the book there is a section titled "Author's Note to Readers: Truth or Fiction." This section is a great addition to the book because it explains which information in the book is historical. It even provides readers with resources for further study if they would like to investigate aspects of history in greater detail. After reading this section of the book, it is surprising to see how many of the facts he used were genuinely gathered from true events. My realization of this fact led to a broader understanding of the effect that his writing style has on his story's believability: It is not necessarily the plot or the facts he has chosen to write about that make his story muddled and less intriguing. Rather it is the structure of the story that doesn't do it justice. If Rollins can find a way to reformat his writing, then I think he might be able to create some interesting and thought-provoking texts. But unfortunately this is not a skill that he has mastered just yet.

#TheDoomsdayKey #JamesRollins #BookReview