The Last Oracle by James RollinsMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Month Read In: February 2022
CAWPILE: 4.5 stars
After being disappointed by my most recent Cotton Malone read (Steve Berry, The Charlemagne Pursuit), I was quite happy to get back to the ensemble cast of Sigma Force. Spoiler alert, Monk is found. I also really love how Gray is learning how to handle his feelings of culpability. There's much more detail in this installment of the way headquarters is laid out and we get a better sense of how this secret military and research arm is housed, based, and how they get to operate from the shadows. I also liked how we were around the world again. Rollins again made me feel like I was with the characters and in the locations. There were some places where he felt a little rushed in his writing and I feel that the portions that took place in India were a little gratuitous and overreaching. I barely remember what the purpose of going to India was.
I love historical concepts being woven into a conspiracy within modern times and again Rollins does not disappoint on this point. The connective tissues between the locales and pieces of the conspiracy were tenuous at best, but Rollins weaved them into a tapestry of believability. While his characters are rooted in a deep-seated logic, they are often dealing with topics that require a suspension of that logic and a belief in the supernatural. The members of the team do not typically get swept up in the belief itself, but they do respect the act of belief their targets or informants have. They look at the situation from the standpoint that others truly believe some really whacked out things and then operate often from the perspective that allows a different viewpoint and a logical understanding of someone else's position.
I must state again that my guilty little pleasure is the "Old Man Thriller" subgenre and I was able to again revel in the twists and turns and what ifs of historical conspiracy concepts bleeding into the modern world.
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