Belated sequel to The Eight (1988), Neville's sprawling
mystical-thriller debut novel about a quest to locate and decipher
the secrets encrypted in an antique bejeweled chess set.Ten years
after Alexandra Solarin's father was murdered at a chess tournament
in Russia - and 30 years after he and her mother, Cat Velis,
managed to scatter and hide the pieces of the Montglane Service to
prevent their falling into the hands of evildoers - former chess
prodigy Alexandra receives a summons to return to her family's vast
Colorado estate to celebrate her mother's birthday. But Alexandra
arrives to an empty house: no departing footprints in the snow, a
fire burning mysteriously in the fireplace and no sign of her
mother. However, a series of cryptic clues, together with a steady
stream of visitors - including Alexandra's chess-whiz aunt Lily
Rad, Russian chess grandmaster Vartan Azov, Alexandra's friend
Nokomis Key and some insistent neighbors - soon put Alexandra on
the track of a new and perilous adventure: One of the most powerful
pieces of the Montglane Service, the black queen, has suddenly
reappeared, threatening doom and destruction. In the
Turkish-occupied Albania of 1822, meanwhile, young Haidee must seek
out her true father, the romantic poet and Greek freedom fighter
George Gordon, better known as Lord Byron. Along the way we learn
why the Montglane Service is so dangerous and important: It was
crafted in the eighth century by the greatest of Sufi alchemists,
al-Jabir ibn Hayyan, who encoded within its structure the secrets
of immortality, the transmutation of elements and what-all.Packed
with the sort of bamboozling twaddle that should come with a
warning: Belief in Alchemy Required. Still, fans of The Eight, Dan
Brown, etc., will jump right in. (Kirkus Reviews)
Twenty years ago Katherine Neville's groundbreaking thriller THE
EIGHT was a global bestseller - a thriller in the style of THE DA
VINCI CODE way before Dan Brown ever got there... In this
long-awaited sequel, Alexandra Solarin, a chess-wizard and the only
daughter of Cat Velis, the heroine of THE EIGHT, arrives at her
mother's Colorado lodge, only to discover that her mother has
disappeared. Finding string of clues, Alexandra is soon joined by a
group of people called there by her mother, including her aunt
Lily, who explains the truth of Cat's past. In 1822, as the
fortress of Sultan Ali Pasha falls to the Turks, the Sultan's
daughter Haidee attempts a desperate journey taking her through
Albania, Morocco and Rome, while carrying an invaluable object and
seeking the one man who can help her: the poet George Gordon, Lord
Byron. Ultimately both Alexandra and Haidee learn that their
missions are even more desperate than they first seem, for both are
players in a dangerous game, a game that began more than a
millennium before either of them were born and that has the power
to affect the fate of human civilization itself.
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