While reading this book, I kept on having to check the front cover to see if it really was by Caleb Carr, and not by someone orthographically similar. Sadly, it does appear to be by him. It's terrible. It reads like Matthew Reilly, but with 10% of the action. The plot is absurd, the characterisation is leaden, and the dialogue sounds like something out of Tintin. The french professor ends all his sentences with a french word "non?","mon ami","precisement" to, like, really drive home the point that he is french. A rebel general in Indonesia addresses the protagonists - invariably - as "my infidel friends". It made me wince. I probably wouldn't be so caustic, as I have read enough poor sf to be somewhat hardened to dodgy plots and silly charaters, except I was really excited to read a non-historical Carr, and was bitterly disappointed.
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