2008-01-01 Gripping start but descends into something ridiculous!

As a fan of some of Steve Alten's other books (such as Meg and The Loch) I have to say I found this book quite disappointing. I have always liked Alten's ability to take something mysterious and use scientific explanations to create his own theories, however I wasn't aware when I bought this book that it would move from a fascinating insight into the mysteries behind Chichen Itza and the Pyramids of Giza into a ridiculous alien war saga. In fact, I think I could have probably handled that if it didn't then try to combine science fiction with a messiah-type tale based on an ancient mayan religious prophecy, which was pretty complicated and inplausible.

It has been suggested that fans of the X-files will like this book, however I think this group (in which I include myself) expect something which is well explained and thus at least slightly credible. I think this reminds me more of the recent Transformers film - fine if you're interested in alien battles involving the latest fighter jets, but completely ridiculous. I'm giving the book 2 stars as the first half was very hard to put down, however the latter half of the book made me wish I'd not bothered. I bought this book with its sequel, and I'm sure I will probably read that at some point (if I'm really bored, perhaps) but I'm not exactly desperate to find out what happens next!