Finally things get interesting again. We get the backstory of what caused everything. The story is moving forward at a fast pace, and you can see the effect this is having on the characters. We get more background into the other species of alien that was hinted at way back in book one, and it wasn't what I was expecting at all. Definitely a better book than the previous one in the series.

Often by this point in a series (book #5) they start to grow stale or repetitive but this one seems to be holding steady and even becoming better each time. The author mixes up the plot and introduces new characters well but probably the sheer scope of the material is what allows it to keep going at a nice pace. After all there is a lot you can do when you come to understand that the entire history of our planet and every significant event was actually shaped and manipulated by aliens.

Still quite a bit of military-style action to suit those fans but this entry in the series delved more into the historical aspects of what’s really been happening throughout human history. The author used a cool technique this time around to help give us some excellent backstory on the alien history. He uses the famous explorer from history, Sir Richard Francis Burton, to tell us the story. But rather than use some kind of flashback tool, the characters of the story translate some of his lost material throughout the course of the novel, feeding us awesome pieces of the puzzle one translated chapter at a time. I happen to be a huge fan of Burton and have read several biographies of him. He had an amazing life and if you haven’t had the chance to really “discover” him yourself I urge you to do so. The author of this novel could not have chosen a better historical figure to enhance the plot here.

Looking forward to the next with continued hopes that this series doesn’t peter out.

What I really admire is that despite this book being the 5th in the series, the author still manages to pull it off. There's as much tension, mystery and action as ever. It's not easy to hold the reader's attention throughout one book, let alone a whole series, and Bob Mayer does it like no one else. Even though there's not much character development, I still love the little eccentric group fighting off the big threat: an African professor, an old Chinese archeologist, a Russian military man and - of course - a bunch of Americans, including the main characters, Mike Turcotte and Lisa Duncan. Everybody is hiding something, nothing is what it seems, the war is raging on. There's no time to stop and think - the pace of the book is incredible, and the military details are also pretty impressive. Great book, great series.

I enjoyed this book a bit more than the others so far in the series. There were a couple of great scenes, such as the battle at Easter Island. The editing seemed tighter and as a whole the story wasn't as disjointed as some of the previous books.

Pick a few myths & legends, mix with SciFi & aliens, data dump from a translated diary every other chapter, then shoot some sh!t up. I kinda like the action scenes, but the data dumps were very tiresome. And the mix & match of myths and legends - Dracula's coming in the next few episodes I reckon as he got heavily hinted at in this one - just got plain annoying for me I'm afraid, which is why it took so long to finish.