While the plot kept me interested, Doherty's military techno jargon/lingo challenge the reader to keep pace--you kind of have to take his word for it. Also, as the book progresses, there's a lot of moving around among places/scenes to depict nearly simultaneous activities. For me, a slow reader (by choice), this requires longer reading times than that provided by my DC Metro commute. ( )

Another good book in the area 51 series, though not as good as the first 3 have been.

We finally discover who the main bad guy is in the series, and his roll throughout history. We get a lot of action, but now there are a lot more players on the scene, making it a wee bit harder to keep track of who is who, and belongs to which faction.

While it seems like there is a lot going on, the story really doesn't go anywhere. A good book to keep the story going, but nothing that stands out. ( )

While I'm a fan of the genre, I can't say the same for this book. This one had a hard time keeping me enthralled. ( )

This is the fourth of nine books (as of late 2009) in Robert Doherty’s Area 51 science fiction technothriller series.

Note: This review concerns a thriller in the middle of a series; there are spoilers for previous books in the series, so you shouldn’t continue reading this review unless you are caught up to this point. The review contains no substantive spoilers for this book, save a terse plot summary.

The plot concerns the need to quickly recover the Spear of Longinus in order to hand it over to Lexina, who has taken control of an old Soviet orbital weapons platform, to stave off the destruction of the United States. While there is the same race against the clock that’s found in all the Area 51 books, this one is a little bland at times. (This despite the imminent demise of the world if a certain object isn’t turned over to one faction of bad guys.)

A new character -- an African anthropologist -- is introduced to take the place of Peter Nabinger. I’m still not quite sure why the author chose to kill him off in a previous novel. There is still a great deal to be revealed via archaeological discoveries and runic translations and Nabinger was just the guy for that. This new character is a real globe-trotting adventurer who has retracing the steps of Sir Richard Burton (the explorer, not Elizabeth Taylor’s ex-husband). I am a big fan of Burton, so it was a treat to see him brought into the Area 51 backstory.

Action takes place across several key locales: in the Brazilian rain forest (scenes reminiscent of Raiders of the Lost Ark); on Easter Island (where the alien computer uses nanotechnology to take out most of a US carrier battlegroup); under Moscow in the KGB’s vaults (think that warehouse in the Indiana Jones, only place it under KGB headquarters); under the Sphinx; and a few brief scenes in the Chinese tomb (though that storyline doesn’t really go very far in this book), among others. The problem is that none of the storylines advance very far, and we are left more or less on a cliffhanger.

By this point in the series, you are either enjoying yourself and want to see how it all turns out, or you don’t. This is definitely not a good book to start the series with; this is one that slowly builds on what is unveiled in each new book, so you should start the series with the first Area 51 novel. I have made it this far, and plan to continue (seeing as I already own all the others) but it was definitely the weakest of the first four books in the series.

Review copyright 2009 J. Andrew Byers ( )

I don't know if it was because I didn't read the other books in the seriies, but I found this one boring. ( )