Review: The Eight, by Katherine Neville

The Eight started out promisingly enough: it's been compared to Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, but in actuality The Eight comes nowhere near that fabulous book. As I read, I hoped that Katherine Neville was writing a parody of an action-thriller, but I guess not.

Where to begin? Overly contrived plot with more holes than Swiss cheese; really, really bad writing style with an over-use of adjectives and past participles; too much historical inaccuracy; too much historical name-dropping, so much so that this novel read like an issue of US magazine (Catherine the Great, Napoleon, Robespierre, Voltaire, and many, many other historical figures are thrown in, sometimes gratuitously); too much foreshadowing, is in, “little did I know…”. The characters were extremely one-dimensional, and I absolutely loathed the heroine, Cat Velis. The book started off well enough, but I found myself rolling my eyes the further I read. I’m all for reading historical thrillers, if the plot is enough to draw me in, but this one didn’t do it for me, I’m afraid.

Also reviewed by: The Printed Page, Medieval Bookworm, Obsessed With Books