The Eight

Surprisingly, I seem to be reading books faster than I can write about them here. So I am now trying to catch up. :-)

The book that I finished reading last week was "The Eight" by Katherine Neville. The plot in a nutshell is like this: Catherine Vellis - an accountant and computer expert is forced to go to Algeria on a project with a little-known organization called OPEC. As if this is not enough, she finds herself burdened with the responsibility of recovering the chess pieces belonging to what was called the Montglane Service that was rumored to have been gifted by some moors to Charlemagne - the king of the Franks. These pieces are supposed to be scattered to far corners of the earth in an attempt at stopping anyone from putting the service together to unleash the powerful forces associated with it.

It's a gripping tale and it's creditable considering that this is the debut novel of the authoress. But I must confess that some of the mathematical and musical explanations were a bit too much to grasp for me and so I skipped them. The tale keeps going back and forth between what's happening in Catherine's life in 1973 and what had happened in life of the French girl Mireille - who was forced to scatter the pieces all across the world - in 1793. It's a bit dizzying at times. What's more, it's difficult to keep track of the cast - at least for someone like me who is not familiar with the tongue-twisting French names - not to mention their titles.

All in all, a delightful book - save only for the intricacies of chess, music and mathematics.