Has anyone ever read [Katherine Neville] The Eight?

This is one of my Favorite books,mystery, and history, eternal life ,a very good read.

I like Katherine Neville as and author anyway but the The Eight series, Is one of the most interesting reading I have had in a long time.

Read it, enjoyed it, reviewed it :)

http://www.librarything.com/work/8259/reviews/2414540

I loved The Eight. The Fire, though...I just finished it, and I'm still trying to process how I felt about it. Definitely not as good.

I just finished reading The Fire, which I received as an ARC for Early Reviewer. I didn't bother hunting down The Eight, but I think The Fire works pretty nicely on its own. It was an interesting sort of book, like some curious cross pollination of Umberto Eco and Helen Fielding. (Brain by Eco, Heart by Fielding) Anyway, I rather enjoyed the way it throws all these concepts and plot lines together in a rather amusing way.

I read The Eight in 1995, re-read it about 5 years ago, and am re-reading it now in anticipation of reading The Fire.

I absolutely adore it.

Edited to get touchstones right.

I read The Eight back in the day and remember it fondly, but in the vaguest possible terms. I've begun The Fire, but the first few chapters are disappointing - Katherine Neville seems to have fallen into the trap of having thought non-stop about how charming and eccentric her characters are for the past ten years and the beginning is more about showing off their cleverness and wealth then in telling a story. Hopefully this will change as things get going...

I recently read The Eight (because I was selected for The Fire) and there were aspects of it that I really liked - especially the way she seemed to breathe such life into her settings. But I wasn't completely entranced by it - the entire purpose of and behind The Game just completely baffled me...

The Eight is one of my favorite books, and one that I frequently recommend to other readers whom I know enjoy complex storylines. I do think, however, that it suffered from what I think of as "new author syndrome", in which an author throws in each and every potentially interesting idea or quirky character or unexpected plot twist which occurs to him/her, as though this is the only opportunity that these ideas will ever see the light of day (or print). I always want to tell such authors, "You *will* write more books: save it!" As a result, while I enjoyed The Eight the first time around, I don't find that it holds up as well on re-reading.

Katherine Neville's subsequent books have disappointed me: they always strike me as just pale remakes of The Eight. I am, nonetheless, intrigued by the little that I've heard about The Fire, and I expect that I will eventually pick it up.

I agree, I read The Eight when it came out, and just loved it (5 stars!) So it's hard for me not to compare The Fire to it.. and I guess that's a little unfair. The book was entertaining, and fun, but just didn't grip me and grab me like the 1st one did. I enjoyed the historical parts, and would have like to have read more about the origin of the Chess set, and those characters. But like I said, my expectations were so high, after The Eight, that it's kind of unfair for me to say anything about The Fire.

To me, it felt like when a band has a great debut album, with an original sound, and then tries to do something really different in their 2nd. It was as though Neville fought against a genre that she perfected, and (for me) kind of created, in her 1st book. Hope she writes a 3rd.

I was at the pharmacy on Friday and noticed that they've re-published The Eight with a chapter of The Fire at the end.

I read it a gazillion years ago when it first came out. I thought it was enjoyable, even though I'm not a huge suspense novel reader... I think I tried another of her books after that, but didn't think much of it.

I was recommended The Eight by a friend after a brief discussion of Umberto Eco and, naturally enough, The Da Vinci Code. I loved Foucault's Pendulum and have always meant to read The Name of the Rose after seeing the movie.

Neville's effort, regrettably, was for me laughable. At times, literally so: the writing was just not impressive, too self-conscious and cliche-ridden. I agree with webgeekstress's comment above: chockablock full of ideas, each in itself intriguing and at times done quite well, but the overall effect being that it was thrown together. I notice the trees rather than the forest, if that makes sense.

I have no interest in reading another of Neville's, would steer others toward Eco or even Dan Brown. For me, Brown is no literary great, but his writing is at least transparent and lets the plot (and to a lesser extent, the ideas) take center stage. Neville's writing detracts from her ideas, and for such a lengthy book, I can't abide it.