Review by: lol
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Intelligence Analyst Rachel Sexton, mid-thirties, single and working for the NRO (National Reconnaissance Office) is called to meet the President of the United Stated in a rather secret way. He sends her to the Arctic as part of a team of experts to confirm and authenticate the findings made by NASA deep within the ice core. This find is something NASA had needed desperately as the agency’s success rate on other fields had been less than positive and a funding crisis would have put other projects in jeopardy.
A motley crew of academics had already been studying the finds and it is only hours before the President and NASA want to go public.
But one of the scientists is startled by something he sees in the icy water and before he has a chance to tell the others, he is killed.
And what the experts and scientist don’t realize is that their every move is monitored from a listening post miles away, secret agents who are not scared to kill in case the secrets of what is actually buried inside the ice becomes apparent.
But it doesn’t take long for the remaining scientists to discover that something is not quite what it seems and when they are attacked they know their only chance of survival is to flee the eternal ice and try and make their way back to Washington DC as fast as they can to reveal the truth about the deception.
Not knowing who to trust anymore, Rachel Sexton and two scientists who were the only surviving members of the team set off to save their own lives and battle their way back to make the truth known.
Like all of Dan Brown’s books, this one starts with a prologue that introduces the reader to a small, if not always really gripping story. Then in the following chapters this prologue is ignored and you might wonder why Brown even bothered to start off the book this way. Fear not, when needed, the story will inevitably return to what was written at the beginning and becomes part of the explanation.
Of course, there is another storyline in the book that I did not mention in my short summary of the book. The story takes place during the run up to the Presidential Elections and the President is running against none other than Rachel’s own father, Senator Sedgwick Sexton who has never made a big secret out of his dislike of NASA and would like to see it gone, or at least privatized. His life as well as some of the White House staff, battle it out on the campaign trail and as you can imagine, both storylines will collide at some point and the race towards a climactic ending of the book is only a matter of time.
As with all characters that appear in Dan Brown’s novels, we do not find out much about them. All we know about Rachel Sexton is that she is highly intelligent (like virtually all of Brown’s heroines), estranged from her Senator father, and pulled into the intrigue and deception without really knowing what’s going on. Her male counterpart is Michael Tolland, a TV personality. We learn only a few things about their private lives, yet these two are drawn to each other from the moment they meet and the inevitable love story line is pre-programmed. As luck will have it Brown does not explore their blossoming relationship in too much detail.
Most of the other characters, although somewhat important for the smooth continuation of the story, are not too memorable. I found that I neither cared nor felt I needed to care for any of them.
If you are a fan of Dan Brown, you will know that he always centers his books around particular themes, the Holy Grail in The DaVinci Code, the Illuminati in Angels & Demons and Code Breaking in Digital Fortress. This book concentrates on NASA, military technology (that nobody is supposed to know exists) and political intrigue, all the hallmarks of a good thriller.
But in my case, I found the book a little bit of a damp squib and although I read it all the way through, it didn’t leave a lasting impression on me. It could be that the subject matter was a little bit too ‘male’ for my liking. After all, not many women are that interested in political intrigue, space agencies and aliens. Despite its pink paperback cover, Deception Point might be more a book for the boys.
But then again, this book really should have been right up my street. I used to love The X-Files and all the alien and paranormal cases Mulder and Scully had to solve. And when I first got into the story of Deception Point I thought to myself that the story would have made a good X-Files episode. Until I realized that most of what I read could have come out of one or more of their episodes. Some of the storyline in the book reminded me very much of a season finale/season opener of the X-Files when an apparent alien was found frozen in the Arctic ice (if I remember correctly). And of course, the two agents had to investigate strange things in the Arctic (or other really cold places) on more than one occasion. So nothing was really new in this book, only packaged in a slightly different way. Maybe that was one of the main reasons that I was not too keen on the book altogether. While it’s not a bad story and will keep you reading until the end, it’s not quite as gripping as it could have been.
Now that I read all four of Dan Brown’s book I feel I can say that am able to predict the outcome of whatever his next book is about. Dan Brown uses a simple formulae and while I wasn’t bothered when reading the first two books, it became only too apparent where the story was heading and how to interpret what each character says or does. It somehow takes the fun out of finding out for yourself as you are only too aware how it will all end. I will have to switch off my brain before reading another Dan Brown book.
All in all, I would recommend this book, but do not expect too much. The story is interesting but not really the page-turner it could have been. A light holiday read but nothing more.
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