Title: The Atlantis Stone by Nick Thacker
Genre: Currently # 7 on Amazon Best Sellers Rank in Kindle Store, Kindle eBooks, Literature & Fiction, Action & Adventure, Travel and #12 in Books, Literature & Fiction, Action & Adventure, Men’s Adventure
Publisher: Turtleshell Press, Third Edition
Publication Date: June 30, 2013
Source: Free offering on BookBub
Title and Cover: The Atlantis Stone – Cover illustrates subject
Yike! What did I sign up for? Was this a sci-fi, action-adventure, mystery, or suspense thriller? Perhaps it was an early attempt at borrowing from one too many plots from men’s movie adventures…ah la Indiana Jones. Not that I’m against Indiana Jones, I’m not…but in this I don’t get to see Harrison Ford or that crooked smile of his when he’s really being devious or devilishly clever.
But this guy is no Ford; he is Bryce Reynolds. As a protagonist, Captain Reynolds is a veteran with combat experience, and apparently not a wholly successful one. He still has some buddies he can bring into a mission that after dividing the mercenary money will still have sufficient moola to care for his ailing mother. He is supposed to protect the owner of a research company, Whittenfield Jr., for six months. So far, so good. And we could get that.
Things quickly go sideways, however, and the plot becomes deeply convoluted between conspiracies created LONG ago (Atlantis) to centuries ago (founding fathers) to possible alien intrusion, along with a collection of myths, legends, and mathematical theory (the Golden Ratio). Confused yet? Somehow, this is all tied up with the search for a “Golden Crystal,” which really isn’t golden (hope I cleared that up!).
After the cipher is solved, the race is on to find the crystal, which will save (maybe) mankind or create a more perfect human. You can’t have a riotous journey without antagonists and in this novel there is one main baddie–Dr. Tanning Vilocek of Vilocorp and various and asundery villains of assorted evil nationalities. Who can you trust?
Sometimes Vilocek, Reynolds, and his team collaborate for the greater good against the greater bad. Sooo many characters–better keep a headcount to remember which side they are on as they race from Washington D.C., to Petra, Easter Island, and Egypt to the great pyramids (where I had a little problem believing they’d get to go look for a golden crystal). The author seems to have no problem in “offing” some of his supporting characters.
I enjoy peeping into anything that may have found the secret to Atlantis–as well as Easter Island and gotta say there were more than abundant theories mixed with fact (oh, fiction, huh…) to hold the interest in each of the locations they managed to plunder. Mercy! You shouldn’t get bored with the pace of this book and if you’ve kept your scorecard properly will be able to follow most of the players.
The main antagonists are fleshed out pretty well, though I had a problem with the protagonist. No spoiler here on the ending, but really, could it end any other way? This was published as a new edition of the old novel previously titled, “The Golden Crystal.” It is a rebooted debut novel; completely revised, rewritten, and updated, but still needed one more editor to catch the simple edit misses I detected.
I downloaded this free offering from BookBub cause I can’t resist anything titled “Atlantis,” I guess. It’s a rollicking, freewheeling, fast-paced adventure–totally implausible–but fun anyway (ignore all the bodies). If you want three free books, you can copy/paste this link and it will take you to the Nick Thacker Starter Library. You can’t go wrong if you are looking for a roller-coaster men’s adventure.
Rosepoint Publishing: Three and One-half of Five Stars
The Author: Nick describes his work as a “mashup” of …National Treasure, The Da Vinci Code…some of Clive Cussler’s stuff, and the “good parts of the Michael Bay movies.” He has written numerous fiction adventures as well as several non-fiction books. Nick lives in a cabin in the Colorado mountains with his wife and daughter, three dogs, and a tortoise. Catch up with him on his website, http://www.nickthacker.com ©2017 Virginia Williams 
Rosepoint Publishing 