Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Absolutely dire, 2 Dec 2008
I enjoyed The Da Vinci Code, and preferred Angels & Demons, so thought this book, as it's of a similar ilk, would be fab.
How wrong I was. I abandoned the book several times because I realised I just didn't care what was going to happen next. The characters are flat and dull, and I didn't particularly like them.
Nothing flowed, and although the clues were clever, they weren't laid out in such a way that you'd try and solve them. It was all force-fed to you.
The ending was awful too. I was hoping for a really satisfying ending to tie everything up, but it was just rubbish. There's nothing redeeming about this book at all. The sense of urgency and intrigue just wasn't there for me, and it doesn't look like I'm the only one...
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
A good idea that has been squandered, 17 Dec 2008
I tend not to slate books because I know how difficult it is to get accepted. But I'm breaking that rule on this one. The Gaudi Key is dire. Although it's translated from the Catalan, we can't blame the translator. I cannot fathom how this was accepted in the first place; someone at Harper should be thoroughly ashamed of foisting this onto the public. It might be telling that there are no review quotes, even translated ones. In the final analysis, this is an ideal book for writing tutors to use - to show how not to construct a book.
The characters are flat and never engage the reader, because the writers clearly were more involved in the puzzle posed to the heroine Maria rather than fleshing out individuals. There are pages crammed with characters' speech - exposition downloaded from textbooks or other sources; and one character has the nerve to say, 'I hope I'm not boring you.' Well, sadly, the writers bored me with their treatise disguised as a thriller. Part 3 is no less than thirty pages of a history lesson, with the Templars thrown in for good measure. Maria is the main character - yet there are ninety consecutive pages when she doesn't appear!
In many scenes the character point of view shifts from one to another and often we haven't a clue who is speaking; it's as if the writers don't care, they just want to spout the information out of their puppets' mouths. An entire chapter is given over to the villains plotting, but we're not shown anything, it's just one speech after another.
Visualisation in tense scenes is important so the reader can see what's happening - but it rarely exists in this book's pages. The heroes are apprehended in the hallway when in the next breath they're in another room - how'd they get there? Maria could feel the breath of the villain on her back - yet he held her captive at sword-point: that's a very powerful pair of lungs he has. And the villain escapes, but how he does it isn't shown - 'the man had disappeared.' (Must be a magician, then). Maria thinks that 'her grandfather had never hurt anyone.' Fine, though this is only forty pages after she read her grandfather's confession that when he was a youth he killed and beheaded an evil opponent... That must have hurt, surely? Then the couple wandered round 'for the rest of the afternoon'; only some eight pages later they're somewhere else and it was five in the afternoon; maybe that should have been evening, since the rest of the afternoon was spent wandering? Do I care?
There is very little in the way of description, save when these puppets are discussing architecture. The whole thing is contrived: the good guys and the villains know almost everything but leave it to Maria to solve the final riddle; the fight at the end is soulless and unconvincing. I'm really sorry to be so brutal, but clearly this is a good idea that has been squandered.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Very contrived Da Vinci Code rip-off, 11 Nov 2008
Everything about this book, on the surface at least, is like Dan Brown's books, most famously The Da Vinci Code. The cover artwork is similar, even the name. 'The' followed by someone famous followed by 'key', which is similar to 'code'. It seems to be the fashion just lately. There are many books on the market that are also blatant and unashamed copies.
However, this one, at least, has tried but failed to copy one aspect of Brown's books. It's not that much of a page-turner. It failed to catch my attention and to pique my curiosity from the start, which is something Brown can do with consummate ease, and I only really started to care what happened with three-quarters of the book behind me! Though the fact that I DID begin to care a little is, I suppose, some praise.
The whole thing is just too contrived. Everything is so URGENT, the clock is ALWAYS ticking, there's a cliff-hanger at the end of every chapter. It feels like some sort of corporate, team-building, orienteering exercise that Miguel and Maria (our hero and heroine) are on. Go here, find this clue, solve this puzzle, which takes you to the next point on the map where you will find another clue and puzzle to solve, ad nauseam.
And the first three-quarters of the book (before Miguel and Maria go on their team-building exercise) just feels like one long lecture on Gaudi and his architecture. Yes, it's nice, I suppose. It looks pretty and quaint, but I don't want a new character to come along every chapter to lecture me on it.
Also, I really didn't understand most of the book. I don't think the puzzles are meant to be solved by the reader. They're usually solved in a feverish flash of (divine?) inspiration that doesn't actually include any rhyme or reason. In that sense, I didn't feel very INVOLVED in this quest. And the BIG SECRET, when you learn of it, isn't particularly mind-shattering.
I would also like to have seen more illustrations and photographs in this book. After all, it IS all about an architect and his creations, yet all we get is one heavily cropped snap of La Sagrada Familia.
PS: I thought the references to the infamous Nazi torturer Dr Mengele (pp.381-82) were a little inappropriate. After all, this is a work of fiction, entertainment.
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