The Mask of Troy

Jack Howard #5

by David Gibbins

"MEMBONGKAR MISTERI DI BALIK TOPENG"
1876. Benteng kuno Mycenae, Yunani. Heinrich Schliemann mengangkat topeng emas Raja Agamemnon dan menemukan sesuatu yang luar biasa. Rahasia itu dibawanya sampai mati, dan harta tersebut nampaknya hilang untuk selamanya....


"MENGUNGKAP KEBENARAN DI BALIK KEBOHONGAN"
Masa kini. Jauh dari Troya, di Laut Aegea. Arkeolog maritim Jack Howard menemukan sebuah kapal Yunani yang karam yang diduga milik Agamemnon. Ketika penemuan menakjubkan ini terkait dengan Schliemann-dan sebuah operasi Nazi yang sangat mengerikan-Jack melakukan perjalanan penuh bahaya ke penjuru Eropa untuk mencari harta dan kebenaran. Tapi, kali ini Jack berisiko kehilangan sesuatu yang bahkan jauh lebih berharga: putrinya.


"KINI SAATNYA MENGGALI LEBIH DALAM"
David Gibbins, pengarang terlaris Sunday Times dengan piawai menggabungkan fakta dan fiksi dalam THE MASK OF TROY-petualangannya yang paling mendebarkan sekaligus menyita perhatian.


Editor’s Note
Menegangkan

Genres: Thriller, Fiction, Adventure, Historical Fiction, Historical, Action, Mystery

512 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Canadian-born underwater archaeologist and novelist. Gibbins learned to scuba dive at the age of 15 in Canada, and dived under ice, on shipwrecks and in caves while he was still at school. He has led numerous underwater archaeology expeditions around the world, including five seasons excavating ancient Roman shipwrecks off Sicily and a survey of the submerged harbour of ancient Carthage. In 1999-2000 he was part of an international team excavating a 5th century BC shipwreck off Turkey. His many publications on ancient shipwreck sites have appeared in scientific journals, books and popular magazines. Most recently his fieldwork has taken him to the Arctic Ocean, to Mesoamerica and to the Great Lakes in Canada.
After holding a Research Fellowship at Cambridge, he spent most of the 1990s as a Lecturer in the School of Archaeology, Classics and Oriental Studies at the University of Liverpool. On leaving teaching he become a novelist, writing archaeological thrillers derived from his own background. His novels have sold over two million copies and have been London Sunday Times and New York Times bestsellers. His first novel, Atlantis, published in the UK in 2005 and the US in September 2006, has been published in 30 languages and is being made into a TV miniseries; since then he has written five further novels, published in more than 100 editions internationally. His novels form a series based on the fictional maritime archaeologist Jack Howard and his team, and are contemporary thrillers involving a plausible archaeological backdrop.

Reviews

[Andrea Haverland · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was another more ruthless-than-I'd-bargained-for book, but these professor-authors know their stuff and spare no details.
There's much-needed humor within, too.
As an art history fanatic and lover of Homer, this book satisfied, reinforcing & expanding my existing knowledge.
It connected evil dots but offered redemptive possibilities, spanning Schliemann's 19th century discoveries at Mycenae & Troy, even offering humanitarian healing after the horrors of Nazi con. camps.
If you're an idealist at heart, the possibilities inherent in this fiction could bend you towards believing an element of probability exists in this story.
All-in-all, a pretty airtight tale and the best written of the three I devoured while lying on beaches ~ speaking of which: if you like scuba diving, this is your book.

[Donna · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one started off slow. It was hard to settle in. It was too technical and felt like a college lecture....not fun. It was also too early to really get to know any of the characters. I'm glad I stayed with it because it did pick up and I was interested in seeing what was going to happen. I also liked Jack. I wish some of the other characters were as developed. So 3 stars.

[Χρύσα Βασιλείου · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ενδιαφέρουσες οι πλοκές που αφορούσαν τις εξερευνήσεις του Σλήμαν, του Τζακ και της παρέας του αλλά και τα όσα διαδραματίστηκαν στη διάρκεια και προς το τέλος του Β' Παγκοσμίου Πολέμου, δεν μπορώ να πω. Ανερμήνευτος εντελώς ο τρόπος σκέψης του συγγραφέα για το πώς κατάφερε να τα ενώσει όλα αυτά σε μια πλοκή, και να βγαίνει και κάποιο νόημα.
Παρ'όλα αυτά, βαρετό. Βαρετό όμως! Χορταστικό όπως πάντα από άποψη ιστορικών και αρχαιολογικών γνώσεων και γενικότερων γνώσεων, αλλά 'άγευστο' εντελώς. Δηλαδή, εμένα που είμαι λάτρις των αρχαίων πολιτισμών γενικά και των πολιτισμών της Τροίας και των Μυκηνών ειδικά, δεν κατάφερε να με κρατήσει όπως και όσο θα έπρεπε. Λυπάμαι πάρα, μα πάρα πολύ!

Θα συνεχίσω διαβάζοντας και τα επόμενα δύο βιβλία του, καθαρά και μόνο γιατί ο λογοτεχνικός μου στόχος για το 2017 είναι να καλύψω με τη σειρά όλους τους συγγραφείς που έχω στη βιβλιοθήκη μου - βασικά, όσους προλάβω... Καθαρά από πείσμα, δηλαδή. Ναι, ξέρω. Περαστικά μου!

[Yanper · Rating 3 out of 5]

ενδιαφέρουσα ιστορία, για το κηνύγι ενός θησαυρού, που εμπλέκει τον Τρωικό πόλεμο και τις ανασκαφές του Σλήμαν στην Τροία και στις Μυκήνες, κάνοντας κι ένα πέρασμα από την ναζιστική περίοδο. Αυτό που δεν μου άρεσε ήταν ο μη ρεαλιστικός και εύκολος τρόπος ανακαλύψεως των αρχαιολογικών ευρημάτων. Κοίταζε στον βυθό της θάλασσας και...τσουπ διέκρινε το πολύτιμο εύρημα, έσκαβε στην Τροία και να με την άκρη του ματιού έβλεπε κάτι ιερογλυφικά. Πίστεύω αν το διαβάσει κανένας αρχαιολόγος θα τον μισήσει που τόσο εύκολα οι ανασκαφές του έβρισκαν τα πολύτιμα αντικείμενα ενώ αυτός θα έχει ταλαιπωρηθεί για σειρά ετών μην έχοντας την αντίστοιχη τύχη.

[Liz · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book started very slow with too much technical detail about scuba diving and archaeology. I understand that these are the author's specialties but they were explain on a level that (to me) the average person would not understand completely. Not to mention that the climax of the book doesn't occur until 3/4 of the way into the book! An underdeveloped ending tops it all off... I was so disappointed.

[kostas vamvoukakis · Rating 2 out of 5]

μια σειρά από γιατί...
γιατί πάλι ναζί;
γιατί πάλι τόσο μα τοσα κλισέ;
γιατί 530 σελίδες... 300 έφταναν...
τίποτα... απλά μέτριο

[Nadia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Genial ! J'ai adoré ... ce mélange entre les faits dans leur contexte historique, et cette intrigue qui vous conduit dans des chemins surprenants, ce mélange entre les époques ....

le résumé : "1876, Mycènes, Grèce, lors d'une fouille secrète, l'archéologue Heinrich Schliemann découvre le masque d'or d'Agamemnon et un autre artefact extraordinaire, dont il ne parlera jamais. 1945, Allemagne, la libération d'un camp de concentration révèle des indices menant à des antiquités volées par les nazis, mais aussi à une arme plus terrifiante que toutes celles jamais conçues. De nos jours, en mer Egée. Jack Howard fouille l'épave d'un navire de guerre qui aurait fait partie de la flotte d'Agamemnon et se lance dans une chasse au trésor de tous les dangers. Mais, de la guerre de Troie à la Solution finale, l'Histoire dissimule des secrets monstrueux. Et à vouloir les exhumer, Jack prend le risque de perdre ce qu'il a de plus précieux au monde. " (ref.amazon)

bon certains diront dur à lire ... technique ... trop documenté ... mais c'est ce que j'ai aimé ... de plus sur 2 sujets qui m'intéresse ... j'ai commencé le livre et ne l'ai plus lâché, me posant même beaucoup de questions induites par l'épilogue .... et une de mes filles (15 ans) vient de prendre le relai le trouvant passionnant et allant même se documenter sur Internet ...

[Curt Hopkins Hopkins · Rating 1 out of 5]

Usually, this guy is great at extending archaeological theory in interesting and unexpected directions, in part because he's an experienced underwater archaeologist, and this makes the books really interesting, despite his not being a great writer and flattening his characters too much. This one, however, is vague and rickety. Not great.

[Mike Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

David Gibbins’s talent as a storyteller continues to improve with his ongoing Jack Howard series. The Mask of Troy is the fifth book in the series and one of, if not the, best of the lot. The book interweaves the Fall of Troy, Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, and archaeological discoveries of recent modern history to brilliant effect.
Jack, Costas, and the IMU team start the novel with two excavations at Troy, one in the ruins of the ancient city and one underwater just off the coast. Both settings are vividly detailed, and Gibbins has a knack for pulling the reader into the ancient Aegean world.
From there the story kicks into gear as their discoveries draw the attention of some less than savoury characters whose actions create part of the emotional conflict in the novel, but Gibbins’s villains continue to fall short of compelling even though he has attempted to rectify that in this book.
Professor Raitz is given an interesting personality and backstory even if we don’t get to spend enough time with him to fully justify his points of view, and his links to the Nazis automatically make him unredeemable. Saumerre is more of a shadowy type, preferring to pull the strings in the background but he has potential to pop up later in the series. If he does, this book is a decent introduction to a character I’d like to see more of.
Jack and Costas’s friendship remains the high point of the series, their trust in each other, general camaraderie, and intimate knowledge of each other’s feelings is top notch, but the strength of this relationship does make the flaws in some of the other ones stand out more.
For example, Jack’s relationship with his daughter Rebecca provides the emotional backdrop to the story and I didn’t feel as connected to that side of the book as I think Gibbins wanted me to. If Costas and Rebecca had switched places for example, then I would have better felt the urgency and intensity that the author was going for.
Previously this series has suffered through chapters of exposition that grind the story momentum to a halt. There is still a degree of that in this book, but it is disguised much better through compelling flashbacks and character introductions that tie the themes of the book neatly together by the end of the story.
The underwater diving sections remain incredibly compelling whether they’re set in a sea of battlefield debris, or an underwater mine shaft and they make for some of the most cinematic moments of the story.
The different perspectives and interpretations of familiar history that arise in the novel are quite inventive and clever and the questions raised about the futility of war and the hubris of man really get the mind ticking.
This is one of David Gibbins’s better novels and the blend of real and fictional history provides a beautiful backdrop for its captivating action, adventure story.

[Chris Wing · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ah. Yes, well. Hmm.
Where do I start, with The Mask of Tory?
I'm not quite sure, I'm really torn.

Maybe, I'll just start and use an apologetic tone.
Okay, so, I really like David Gibbins. I really do. I've caught glimpses of the stuff he puts up on Facebook and find it fascinating; I also really enjoy his passion for what he does. He's a talented and inspiring guy and his enthusiasm really does spill out on the pages of the books he writes.

I also find these parts of his books (with this one being a prime example) absolutely fascinating (albeit the notion that I probably take more as gospel than I should, since the subject matter is something that I tend to know very little about beforehand), the parts where one could imagine getting lost due to the dryness of the fact feeding certainly does not feel dry or dull to me.

However, what I do find hard to enjoy is when the characters speak. Now, I hate to be one who slings out the phrase 'clunky exposition!' when I can't step up and show an enormous body of work to show my comparative skill, but, as a reader, I don't feel any soul between these characters who are friends and long-time colleagues/partners, etc.

I get that Jack and Costas are life-long friends, but their cameraderie just does not flow for me. They do not talk to each other like they are friends with a shared history; they talk to each other like amateur actors who have just met and struggling to act as people who know each other.
They also tell each other stuff that they both know (and they both *know* that they both know!), which I thought was rule #1 in things a writer should avoid.
I don't know if this is just me or what, because I don't remember being struck by this in his previous books (admittedly, it has been over 5 years since I read his last one), but I certainly felt it here and, I'm sad to say, it affected my enjoyment of the book.
Rebecca is a 17 year old girl (young woman!) who acts as though she is as old as Jack and pretty much any talking in her vicinity or talking about her, seems to want to remind the reader that she still is just 17. Which, whilst being odd, is actually useful because I get no sense that she is a teenager whatsoever. She's pretty much Jack Howard in a school uniform (I assume), and says as much.
She also cries without any build up. There are scenes where she is told something sad and she just gets choked up. Now, I understand empathy, boy do I, but this girl just starts weeping at random intervals without any kind of build up! I can see what Gibbins is doing, and I can see how the scene must play out in his head, but there's just a little something that doesn't quite make it to the page. I'm not really sure how to describeit.
My penultimate gripe is one particular scene near the beginning of the book and that's when two of the secondary characters have a good old chat about how bloody gosh darned awesome the main protagonist, Jack Howard, is. This, I'm afraid to say, really grated on me, and almost put me against our hero, this scene suddenly making him quite the Mary-Sue. This made e really hope he did something awesome in the rest of the book.
Great characters don't need other characters sneaking off to have a good old chat about how great that person is, I don't need to read that, I need to *see* it in the scenes.
Equally awkward is that it is clear that Jack HOward is the print version of David Gibbins himself. I'm fine with this, we all do it, and it makes sense that many characters that authors write have similar knowledge bases and ideals to that of the author themselves - write what youi know, right? - so, with that in mind, this verbal love-in for the main character feels altogether a bit awkward and I didn't really know where to look... !
The only time someone should go on about how great another (off-screen) person is, is when it is saying more about the person talking, not the object of their, er, desire (!). If a man is talking about how wonderful the woman he loves is, the scene is about his feelings, not the actual content of his words.
This scene didn't do this, it was simply there to inform the reader how awesome the main character is.
'Show, not tell', is the idea.

Now, I recall thoroughly enjoying the previous book 'The Tiger Warrior'. The action balanced with the history lessons just fine; this book doesn't balance it so well.
I can only think of two exciting action scenes in the whole book and neither time were our heroes in any particular danger (certainly not in comparison to previous books). In fact, it took an inordinately long to time to get to even these.

I liked the flashback scenes, I felt they were nicely realised (in fact, I wish more was set back there), and, credit where credit was due, when people talked to each about things they had discovered, or theorised, the narrative flowed very well. I just wish that it hadn't dropped the balls that the last book juggled quite well.

Don't get me wrong, I have all the subsequent books and I intend to read them, I just have my fingers crossed that some of the neon-signed no-nos are ironed out for the next book.

I love that the reader gets an idea of what goes on in Gibbins' life, and we benefit from the fruits of his imagination off the back of everything he is learning/discovering/inspired back. In many ways, that feels like quite the privilege - who gets to do undersea archaeology? Not many people! And it's this, I think, that keeps people reading his books.

[Bonnie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I finished this a while ago, but haven't updated my Goodreads since!

I really, really liked this book. I picked it up at BJ's mostly because it seemed to be a piece of historical fiction on Heinrich Schliemann. It was, partly, but it was mostly a book on fictional archaeology. Pretty much everything in this book was geared toward my interest; there was even a bunch of talk (due to the Schliemann storyline) about Mycenae and ancient treasuries, which tied in nicely to my research on the Treasury of Atreus last summer.

I'm not giving this five stars because there were many parts of the book that were slow-moving. I had trouble getting into the book past the first Schliemann chapter, and there were often times when the archaeology talk got too complicated for me (and it was my college minor!). So I'm not sure if those parts would be dreadfully boring to a reader with no knowledge.

But really cool and imaginative. I passed this on to the former head of my classics department, and I'm curious to hear what he thinks about it too.

For anyone interested in Homer, Troy, Greece, or archaeology. I'll definitely be checking out this guy's other books.

[Katrin · Rating 1 out of 5]

Nope. nope nope nope. This was a terrible book. How can you have such an interesting historical background and then kill it so efficiently. There is endless boring talk. Partly scuba diving technology which I know nothing of and don't want to learn it, partly just men trying to outgeek each other about Troy and other excavation sites, historical knowledge etc. That was definitely too much. Also the whole Nazi string of events really annoyed me. Ok, we needed it for the necessary violence and bloodshed as the "climax" of the book (yawn) but yea.. i'm so mad. If you want to use german words, for fuck's sake, check them!! Use google translate, ask a german friend, something! How can someone write a book about this and still write "scheiße" as "sheisse". one quick check in google will solve that! Anyway.. the whole story seemed terribly staged, too unrealistic, with all the strange tries at being humorous and endless conversations that dragged on and I simply skipped them.

[Natasha Curulli · Rating 5 out of 5]

David Gibbins is a genius. His books are always interesting with unique twists to common myths and legends. I can't comprehend how he combines all this knowledge with his own interpretations, it's sheer brilliance.
In this particular installment Gibbins uses the legend of Troy as the backdrop for this story. He recounts the discoveries of Troy and Agamemnon's mask through Schliemann's eyes and intermingles this with nazi history of stolen artifacts.
Without giving to much away this is definitely a must read. Obviously this is the fifth installment of the protagonist, John Howard's adventures, so if anyone wants to give Gibbins a go start with book one: Atlantis. Honestly, if you are looking for a book that is a unique action and suspense filled story with a great history/fiction combination, than you must add Gibbins to your reading list.

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

An ancient mask and a Nazi weapon. Should it stay buried?

[Marriah · Rating 3 out of 5]

First things first: yes, this book can be read without reading the first 4 Jack Howard books. Any events or other information needed to understand the events of this book are summarized within the text. Personally, this was my first Jack Howard book and I never felt lost. This is definitely one of those books that the history is the main star, not the characters.

Overall, I can't say this book is well written, but it was a nice book to waste away my first week of summer on, especially considering I just returned from studying abroad in Greece where the focus of our program was Gods and Heroes: Homer's Bronze Age. It was fun for me to see these details I spent a whole semester learning about woven into a story involving the Nazi Regime, Schliemann's excavations at both Troy and Mycenae and modern day archaeology.

This book requires a lot of background information to be pretty much dumped on the reader from the get-go in order for it to work. Gibbins tried to make the information interesting, by weaving it into the conversations, internal reflections and debriefing meetings of the IMU underwater archaeology team but... it's really hard to dress up the boring details of archaeology, geology and diving protocol for the layman. It is apparent from his descriptions that Gibbins is very passionate about diving and underwater archaeology, both of which are main focuses in the scenes carrying the most tension/ suspense. But... I honestly found them dull. If I wasn't so determined to stick with this book, I may have put it down after the first dive scene and missed the actually good writing Gibbins has to offer in part 2 of this book, the part focusing on a flashback to a bunker in World War 2. The characterization was better in these chapters, the emotions felt more raw, and the events felt like they had actual weight and thus real consequence/ importance. Accompanied by the chapters in modern day that are focused on a friend of the soldier in part 2, this part of the book was an actual page-turner.

Unfortunately, that's when things started to go downhill. Early on in the book, there is a thug storyline introduced but not mentioned again until after the World War 2 flashback. It's meant to tie those events to the present day and add conflict/tension to pressure the characters into real action. It reads like a bad action movie plot: predictable, which makes it not very interesting and not very tense. Honestly, the actions of the "heroes" in the showdowns against the bad guys really confuses me. Mainly, I mean the killing of the thugs, especially in the salt mine. It felt really cold, despite the narrative attempting to make it seem justified. I understand that Jack was angry about his daughter being kidnapped, but the way he kills the thugs and the way Costas and Jack try to "joke" about it make it seem more cold-hearted than necessary for their survival, which based on the facts the reader knows it is and Gibbins tries to reinforce with guilty revelations from Jack after the fact. Overall, I got really mixed vibes from the "heroes" way of winning these showdowns. It felt wrong.

I really liked the details from history and archaeology Gibbins put into this book, even if it did bog down the pacing most of the time. For that reason, I don't think this book is for everyone. I, however, look forward to reading another Jack Howard book.

[Brittney Tyler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Star Rating: 5 stars

Note: This is the 5th book in the Jack Howard series so this will not be an in-depth review.

If you know me in real life, then you will know that I have a love of ancient history and archaeology, so much so that, at one point, I wanted to be one (I can’t anymore due to an anxiety disorder.). Anyway, I decided to pick up the Jack Howard series because it is written by an archaeologist and features so much actual history that it is almost insane that it is actual fiction (However, if you know anything about history and the fact that it changes with pretty much every new discovery, then you know that a better description is probably speculative fiction.) This volume focuses on Heinrich Schliemann and his evacuations at the site of ancient Troy and a possible connection that he could have with the pacifist movement and the Nazis.

I really enjoyed the fact that the danger got ramped up in this volume. If you have read this series, then you know that the 1st one is not only filled with history and archaeology but also with high stakes and a totally amazing villain. The next three in the series don’t feature as much of an adventure and although they are still entertaining, I missed the danger element. However, it was back in this volume, and it looks like it will be continuing into future volumes as the main villain is still at large, so the stakes are still high.

In the end, this was a great installment to the series and also a great book to read when I was in a reading slump as it was entertaining and exciting. 5 stars!!!!!

[Valerie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The other David Gibbins book I picked up from the book swap alongside "Pyramid".

Unfortunately, I read that one ahead of this one, so I already knew what would happen with the Rebecca storyline. Which ruined that particular aspect to a rather large extent.

Not that I was hugely taken with the suspense to begin with. I simply wasn't engaged enough with the characters for it to be very important what happened to them. The Hugh and Peter storyline was far more interesting to me than the Jack, Costas and Rebecca one. To the point where I wanted more on them and less on the others.

I was a bit surprised by the concentration camp details, but it was all authentic, so it was fine, but it wasn't what I was expecting from this type of book. Even with the Nazi story arc mentioned on the back cover, I had expected it to be more in line with what is normally done. But the difference isn't a bad one, just a tad unexpected.

I did notice some errors, though. In one of the past Nazi chapters, the name 'Howard' popped up a few times when Peter was the pov and there was no character named Howard present. The other thing is that I feel there were descriptions and outcomes that didn't line up at different points of the book. However, since it took a while to read, I wasn't entirely certain of it and didn't care enough to go back and check.

So, interesting and intriguing in places, but it fell short on characterizations and creating engaging personalities that the reader really cares about. I will be passing this on and likely won't pick up another book by this author.

[Ren Puspita]

DNF

Setelah sekian lama ga DNF dan selalu ngeyel buat ga DNF, akhirnya memutuskan ah sudahlah, bodo amat :))

Walau dibilang kayak perpaduan antara Indiana Jones dan Dan Brown, nyatanya isi bukunya jauh lebih boring dibandingkan dengan kombinasi keduanya. Bahkan membandingkan buku ini dengan Indiana Jones dan Dan Brown itu udah bikin tersinggung. Like, bedanya sangat kentara kayak bumi dan langit. Buku ini berasa keriiing, keriiing banget, ga ada rasa bikin excitednya sama sekali. Paruh pertama begitu boring, berasa kayak baca buku teks.

Bahkan buku teks sejarah aja masih lebih menarik.

Ternyata Mask of Troy ini buku kelima dari petualangan Jack Howard, jadi gue juga ga tahu si Jack ini siapa selain arkeolog handal etc bla de bla. Tokoh - tokoh lain pun ga ngerti, X ini siapa, Y ini siapa, apa hubungannya dengan tokoh utama. Penjelasannya tentang Troya dengan paragraf berbelit2, walau penjabaran saat perang dunia 2 dengan setting holocaust cukup bikin tertarik dan trenyuh. Walau begitu, tetep aja ga bikin gue pengen lanjut. Udah gue diemin beberapa bulan dari akhir Mei dan baca buku lain pun, ternyata ga pengen lanjut lagi. Jadi ya sudahlah.

Untuk sebuah review DNF, ini udah lumayan panjang, wkwk. So, cukup sampai disini saja. Bukunya bakal gue kasihkan ke orang saja X)).

[Cliff Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book holds so many points of interesting history. Hienrich Schliemann, driven by his dreams of finding the treasure of Homer's Iiliad during the battles of the Greeks and the Trojans. The Mask of Agamemnon, the Shield of Achilles, the ancient arms race pitting the Iron Age against the Bronze age.
Then the Gallipoli Campaign, the Nazi Concentration camps, Bismarch against Gladestone. It's all in there as we are drawn back and forth through history.

Technical diving - boyancy suits, decompression sickness, nitrogen narcosis, deep diving on wrecks, even defusing mines.

Unfortunately, for me, the action and adventure does not seem realistic and the various subplots do not tie up and conclude very well. Fighting Russian gangsters and Nazis at the same time, it would have been good to see a more original antagonist. Only Kickarse could have shown more courage or had more luck in a violent confrontation.

Written as a book in a series of sequels, I'm left fascinated by the content but feel the focus on quantity loses something in quality. Possibly this is an acceptable trade-off in the modern age of Netflix Season 5.

[Cindy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jack Howard is on the hunt for a Trojan war ship. Only one issue, the wooden boats don’t survive in the sea near Troy. Also, left behinds of the world wars make the search more challenging than it already is. The story was a bit slow at times for my taste. Lots of it was rather predicable, and I wonder if the amount of detail surrounding the German Labor camp was necessary. I don’t care for book dealing with the whole Nazi era, usually doing my best to avoid them. It kind of snuck into this book, at least to me, unexpectedly. It was such a horrible time in our history, writing fiction about it, feels wrong, feels like making light of it, and not giving it the gravity it deserves. I guess David Gibbins didn’t treat it too badly, but I did not enjoy it, and was not sure it was necessary for the story, especially in that amount of detail. But than, I’m not the author. In the end the story did pick up a bit of speed, but it never went at a good pace, until the eventual resolution, which was kind of like Wha , Bam, Thank You, Ma’am.

[Joie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you David Gibbins for a book that actually got me reading again! I hadn't been able to read since my now ex husband moved in with me and liked to go to bed at night watching comedy shows loudly on his laptop. I picked up The Mask of Troy to take on a camping holiday recently, and by the time I got home I'd found another David Gibbins in a book shop on holiday and finished that too!

The story is fast paced but not too fast. There is lots of interest. The archeology is fascinating, but not over the top or vastly too unbelievable. I love the author's note at the back explaining everything. My only criticism is that every senior member of staff of the IMU seems to be a close personal friend of Jack's from years ago. I can't stand people that make employment decisions purely on the basis of 'well they're my mate'. And why do the majority of alpha male thriller story lead characters get called Jack? They're everywhere. I've only ever met one Jack in real life, and he's an artsy type.

[جلجامش Nabeel · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great book, sometimes boring with too much technical details, yet it is rich in historical and architectural details. It will take you to Greece, Turkey, UK, Germany, Poland and other places. It is a nice adventure. I read it mostly while crossing Marmara Sea.

Selected Quotes:
- We can never kill war; all we can do is to contain it.
- The morality of a man is not easily judged by the circumstances in which history envelops him, and for which history may yet hold him accountable.
- He who possessed iron in the age of bronze possessed the advantage.
- It is the individual who has morality, not the crowd.
- I speak as a citizen of the United States of America, where individual freedom, the rights of the individual, is enriched in the Constitution. I look to Europe, and I fear greatly for the future. Mass movements, Volk movements, begin on a high ideal, on ideal of social justice, but they submerge the individual, and thus the voice of common morality.

#GilgameshNabeel

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have to say that I did struggle with this book which is a shame as there was I am sure a lot of clever archaeological details both factual and cleverly created that just simply passed me by. Considering how many books there are in the series (I guess it didn't help that I started at book 5 either) that these are popular enough but for me it just didn't connect.

I think there were too many long debates over where, how and why finds were made around one of the most famous stories told (that of the battle of Troy and the events and tales that arose around it).

For me history is something I can see where it has left physical marks in the world - I guess you would call it modern history where this is really more theory and transposition and I think that is where I struggled the most with. So sadly not one of my more enjoyable reads.

[Brentman99 · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've read a few other Jack Howard novels and have found them quite enjoyable. The characters are solid and Jack Howard/Costas Kazantzakis are quite comparable to Clive Cussler's Dirk Pitt and Al Giordino back in the days of his earlier novels. I find Gibbins weaving of real and fictional history to be entertaining and would recommend the series to anyone who loves history and a good story.

My only issue with this one is that the ending seemed to be not as high quality as others, but it all still comes together pretty well.

Overall, this book is worth reading.

[Clare · Rating 3 out of 5]

The historical and archaeological invention and fact in the book are excellent, but as has been mentioned by others, the characters and dialogue are clunky. Never mind, the plot pounds on from one situation to the next. The section set in the death camp in WWII was sensitively written with some nicely ambiguous characters. So this is a fun bit of fluff with some learned elements, a great way to relax over a few evenings.

[Janice · Rating 3 out of 5]

Whoops, read this one out of order. Oh well, still enjoyable. This series is kind of a Indiana Jones meets Dirk Pitt with a touch of Fox Mulder thrown in for good measure. This particular story moves from back and forth from Troy to Nazi Germany. I could tell you the connection, but that would spoil things. :-)

[John Makantasis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Κλασική γραφή του Γκιμπινσ, όλα τόσο εύκολα κ τόσο εξωπραγματικά! ΑΛΛΑ μου δόθηκε η ευκαιρία να διαβάσω κ κάτι διαφορετικό σε σχέση με την κινηματογραφικού τύπου περιπέτειες που συνήθως γράφει. Με εξέπληξαν λοιπόν ευχάριστα τα κεφάλαια που περιέγραφε τις συνθήκες κρατήσεις των στρατοπέδων. Με έβαλε ακριβώς στην συνθήκη.

[Mazen Alloujami · Rating 2 out of 5]

Un roman d'aventures archéologiques et historiques avec un complot néo naziste, sans aucun intérêt ni profondeur, écrit dans un style hollywoodien de mauvais goût. En bref, je n'ai pas pu le terminer.
قصة مغامرات أثرية وتاريخية مع مزيج من مؤامرة نازية، دون عمق او أهمية، بأسلوب افلام هوليوود التافهة. باختصار، هو كتاب سيء لم أستطع إنهاء قراءته

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I mostly enjoyed the history in this novel and how Gibbins wove together facts about Troy, Schliemann, Homer, The Iliad and The Odyssey, etc. The most interesting part was the epilogue about recent excavations at Troy. The story itself, I just kind of skimmed. The characters weren't all that interesting to me.

[Rosalyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Each book by DAvid Gibbins that I read I say cannot get better than this then I read the next one and oh yes it does.
What a wonderful book with so much fact and history skillfully interwoven with fiction. One of my best reads so far. Till I read the next one in the series no doubt.
The history of Troy with the Dardanelles and WW1 and WW2 all together in a fast paced action adventure.