The 13th Tablet

by Alex Mitchell

Iraq, 2004. The war on terror rages on and as lawlessness escalates in Iraq, looters are hitting the museums. Mina Osman, a spirited young American archaeologist of Iraqi descent appalled at the loss of her parents' heritage, heads to the University of Mosul to help source Iraq's antiquities.While reprimanding one of her students for conspiring with the looters, a cuneiform tablet dating back three thousand years is handed over for restitution. The tablet holds within it a profound secret about the primordial flood described in the Gilgamesh epic.What begins as a straightforward translation of an ancient text triggers a series of disruptive and life-threatening events. A chase without limits ensues which takes the savvy and adventurous Mina and Jack, a handsome ex-US Army Major, from Mosul to Safed and from Cambridge to Phuket, in the midst of the tsunami cataclysm.Alex Mitchell is an honorary researcher at the Institute of Archaeology, Oxford University. Alex is working on two sequels to "The Thirteenth Tablet" which will take Mina Osman to China, India, and Greece, with a climax in North America.

Genres: Fiction, Book Club, Adventure

352 pages, ebook

First published February 10, 2012

About the author

An archaeologist and researcher who studied at Strasbourg in France and at Oxford University. He is currently an Honorary Associated Researcher at the Institute of Archaeology, Oxford.

Also writes non-fiction under the name Alexandre G. Mitchell.

There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Alex^^^Mitchell

Reviews

[Gopal · Rating 1 out of 5]

Bad. This word sums up my feelings on this book precisely. The burb on The 13th Tablet was intriguing which made me pick up this book. I was soon left regretting this decision.

Meet Mina Oswald - modern day Cleopatra - as the author would like us to believe. She's an archeologist, a professor, a Ph.D student and beautiful to boot. What's not to like? Except for the tiny fact that she's dumb as a dodo and lets not talk about common sense.

The book came across more of the author trying hard to make the reader like Mina rather than focusing on the plot. Speaking of the plot, its bizzare as to how simple things are for the lady Indiana Jones to find out about the missing 13th Tablet. Talking about the tablets, the author starts off with 1 clay tablet which has a stone tablet hidden inside it which in a roundabout way leads the illustrious lady to another tablet.... I mean which one is the 13th is a mystery that is not solved even when the book ends.

Following the lady - as she trapises around the globe meeting scholars - like a lovesick puppy is Retired. Major John Hillcliff. He's so in love with his lady that the basic common sense soon deserts outs hero while is he's out trying to save the world beside his lady love. Add to that a more characters who fall in love/lust with Miss Oswald as soon as they lay their eyes on her (this includes the villan) the whole thing becomes boorish to the extreme.

There is no reason why the reader to empathise with Miss Oswalds quest, the Major comes across as a macho gone wrong, the author is confused between who to make the villan in this tale, the greedy bilionaire or the cultist leader and all it leaves the reader is a massive headache and a healthy dose of apathy towards the protagonists.

By the end of this book I couldn't care less if they succeeded, I just wanted the damn book to end.

[Melanie Addis · Rating 1 out of 5]

Total nonsense

[Christa Maurice · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF. Just awful. I would expect writing like this in the first draft of a new author who had just put down Dan Brown and thought "I can do that!" The writing is clunky and passive. More tell than show. It's about as exciting to read as the ingredients on a cereal box. And it's loaded with typos and factual errors. It isn't even formatted correctly. There are no breaks for the chapters. It's one long, endless, boring explanation of a story.

[Angel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book. I read several reviews after I started reading, and yes, there are a lot of typos and errors which can be annoying. But the story itself, I found to be intriguing and worthwhile. I liked the characters, the twists, and the flow. (This was a gym book, one I only read while on the stair machine, which is why it took so long to finish)

[Terri · Rating 3 out of 5]

Think Indiana Jones. Overall a page-turner, but I thought Mina’s character was confusing. On one hand she was very smart and adventurous; on the other hand, a bit of a whiner. I think the story could have managed an overall strong female, not one that had to be saved by a hero constantly.

[Beth Cox · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story was interesting and mostly easy to follow. The character development was good. The writing was conversational, which I enjoy. A light, easy read.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Please hire a good proofreader before you publish your next book! I enjoyed the story, but the errors and lack of commas were very distracting. If you need a proofreader, contact me.

[Penny Hoover · Rating 2 out of 5]

Seemed to be more of a tedious romance novel, disjointed

[Suzanne]

This was harder to get into than I thought it would be. I am not really recommending it.

[F. De · Rating 5 out of 5]

An archaeological thriller set first against the backdrop of the Iraq war, then moving to Israel and Cambridge as it gains momentum to reach an action-packed apotheosis in exotic Thailand.
While the American armed forces are battling it out with Saddam Hussein's republican guard, a young female archaeologist finds an ancient but mysterious Sumerian tablet on the Iraqi black market, which talks about the biblical flood but also contains some disturbing mathematical formulae and predictions. When she notifies her university colleagues about her discovery, she soon finds out that dark forces including a ruthless millionaire art collector and an obscure Jewish Cabbalistic sect are also very much interested in the artifact and will recoil at nothing to gain possession of it. To remain ahead of the millionaire's henchmen and the esoteric assassins while attempting to decipher the formulae, she joins forces with a former American intelligence officer. Together they travel first to Israel and then to Cambridge where further clues are hidden. But as their pursuers close in on the couple, she discovers that the handsome American too has a double agenda..

[Jacqueline Farrell · Rating 2 out of 5]

I gave this book two stars because the actual story was just intriguing enough for me to want to finish it, but everything else - characterisation, style, punctuation (punctuation! - to be fair, where was Mr Mitchell's editor? Clearly commas are things to be despised and ignored wherever possible) - was really quite poor. 'madam','miss', 'sir' - none of these should be spelt with capital letters, unless they are at the beginning of a sentence or actually part of one's title and name eg. 'Miss Osman'; otherwise they are simply polite ways of addressing people. It could have been so much better with just a little more effort, but I have no interest in reading any more of Mina Osman's stories. And may I just say, as a woman, I was shocked by the line, 'He stood up, ignoring Mina...she had not felt like a woman for quite some time and it felt good to be recognised as one again,even in a negative context.' No, it wouldn't, ever! Why on earth would someone born in the UK in 1974 think a woman would be happy to be treated like a second class citizen because it made her 'feel like a woman'? Unbelievable.

[Jordan Wareham · Rating 3 out of 5]

The 13th Tablet is a good and interesting read, detailing Benjamin of Tudela, Cuneiform Tablets and disastrous events. The book centres around religion; Buddhism, Christianity, Muslimism and mainly Jewish beliefs.

The two main characters Mina and Jack's relationship is supposedly two people from very different backgrounds falling in love, yet Alex Mitchell brings up Jack and Mina's lust for each other way to often.

The enemies are highly confusing and it jumps back and forth between who the actual enemy is. First its Wheatly, then it jumps to the "Dark Ones", who should have been explored further but were not, then back to Wheatly.

However, the book is truly interesting and well wrote, and a real page turner. Alex Mitchell's style of travelling the world was brilliant and characters like the Barmarts, Professor Almeini, and the endless amounts of rabbi's made for a truly wonderful read.

[Destiny · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed the story a lot! I loved the history and the intrigue. I loved the setting of it being in Iraq in 2004. I liked the main characters, especially the leading woman. Overall, it was a great story with an interesting Jewish twist. I also really enjoyed the twist at the very end.

[David Brillhart]

Ms. Indiana Jones meets the flood

Very interesting read, and non stop thrills as a female archeologist tracks down an ancient mystery, and faces a modern apocalypse, foreseen in ancient times, or just a coincidense?

[Teresa l. Yrure · Rating 5 out of 5]

Page turner

I love the adventure it takes you on...I'm sad there isn't a sequel yet or any mention of the 2nd book?!
What's going on...did the writer give up...please release the 2nd book

[Readabook · Rating 1 out of 5]

I tried so hard to throw up and remove the badness this book left in me. I couldn't. :(
Boring, bad writing ... No more.

[Ellen · Rating 3 out of 5]

it was good. a tad far fetched but enjoyable. the typos and grammatical error were rather annoying.

[Renee Attilio · Rating 1 out of 5]

Horrible

[Jed · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rather far fetched, but that was always going to be the case with this type of book. I enjoyed it and would read another by the same author.

[Les · Rating 2 out of 5]

What started off as an interesting story turned into a confusing, improbable and most definitely far fetched yarn. Invisibility...really?
Disappointing.

[Claire Massie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good page-turner with lots of interesting historical and geographical info, but the grammar mistakes were so distracting. It was as if nobody bothered to proofread it.