Thursday, April 10, 2014

Book Review: Finding Sheba by Heather B. Moore (Whitney Finalist 2013)

Title: Finding Sheba
Author: Heather B. Moore
Enjoyment Rating: ***
Source: Digital Copy
This book would be rated: PG-13 for violence

In Finding Sheba, Heather Moore draws on her expertise as an author of historical fiction and turns her attention to historical thriller. In this novel, the discovery of the lost tomb of the Queen of Sheba throws archaeologists, rich guys, and the tenuous peace of the Holy Land into peril.

Finding Sheba is another book where the Segullah readers had strong and dissenting views. As someone who read all forty books, I tend to judge a book quickly. If the story and the characters don't grab me in the first hundred pages, I'm likely to start skimming. Finding Sheba is a complicated story with lots of main characters. Although the book is an "Omar Zagouri Thriller" (which says to me that there will be/have been others), Omar initially appeared to be a secondary character, since the story opens with a dead American college professor, his protege, Jade, and her French contact in Egypt, Dr. Lucas Morel. I thought they would be the main characters, with the Omar and Mia story acting as a side story. I felt that the double romance, coupled with the puzzle of who killed Dr. Lyon and the main issue of the tombs felt a little heavy for a single story. Dr. Morel felt like a creepy, untrustworthy character, and I kept expecting him to turn out to be a bad guy, so the conclusion to his part of the story felt unrewarding. The story took a long time to get off the ground, which is bad for the contest and impatient readers like me, but I trust my colleagues, who say that the book is richly-layered and rewarding for those who persist.

No comments: