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The Mona Lisa Sacrifice
- GenresFantasy
264 pages, Paperback
Published October 29, 2024
16 people want to read
About the author
Peter Darbyshire
34 books43 followersThe author of the Book of Cross supernatural thriller series (The Mona Lisa Sacrifice, The Dead Hamlets, The Apocalypse Ark) as well as the books Has the World Ended Yet?, The Warhol Gang and Please.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 17, 2026
What happens when a soul enters the body of Christ after he is resurrected and returns to heaven? Then, what will happen if the soul’s freedom is dependant on a justifiable hatred and hunt for Judas over thousands of years? Peter Darbyshire’s The Book of Cross series is full of various plot points centred around quite an intriguing concept. Book 1: The Mona Lisa Sacrifice is a supernatural thriller that I will focus on here.
Cross, is man who is stuck living forever after his soul becomes a part of Christ’s physical body. He is immortal, stuck between the injustice of angels and the selfishness of demons. When an angel promises him Judas’ location if Cross can find the Mona Lisa, he embarks on a worldwide adventure. But is it the Mona Lisa painting he’s trying to find, or it something else entirely?
Fans of Dan Brown will honestly LOVE this book and would probably rate it closer to 4.5 stars. The premise was creative and made me want to know more about Cross. Why does he not have any pre-Christ body memories? How could his soul become part of Christ? Is there something that can break his immortality? Is Judas only alive because of Cross’ hatred? I’m sure at least some of the questions will be answered in later books. My biggest issue was there was WAY too many plot points. I got so lost in the story, and not in a good way. Cross is assigned to find the Mona Lisa, and then to get information about it he has to do a separate task, which causes him to do another task to access the solution to the first task…. By the end of the book I genuinely forgot what the purpose of all of this was for.
Cross, is man who is stuck living forever after his soul becomes a part of Christ’s physical body. He is immortal, stuck between the injustice of angels and the selfishness of demons. When an angel promises him Judas’ location if Cross can find the Mona Lisa, he embarks on a worldwide adventure. But is it the Mona Lisa painting he’s trying to find, or it something else entirely?
Fans of Dan Brown will honestly LOVE this book and would probably rate it closer to 4.5 stars. The premise was creative and made me want to know more about Cross. Why does he not have any pre-Christ body memories? How could his soul become part of Christ? Is there something that can break his immortality? Is Judas only alive because of Cross’ hatred? I’m sure at least some of the questions will be answered in later books. My biggest issue was there was WAY too many plot points. I got so lost in the story, and not in a good way. Cross is assigned to find the Mona Lisa, and then to get information about it he has to do a separate task, which causes him to do another task to access the solution to the first task…. By the end of the book I genuinely forgot what the purpose of all of this was for.
September 17, 2024
Peter Darbyshire is a Canadian journalist and editor, with a sheaf of books to his credit. This October, Wolsak & Wynn presents a new edition of Darbyshire’s wild ride, The Mona Lisa Sacrifice, first released in 2013 by ChiZine Publications under Darbyshire’s pseudonym, Peter Roman. The Mona Lisa Sacrifice is the first book of the Book of the Cross series.
The marketing blurb:
Meet Cross. He’s lived for thousands of years, hungering for grace – but not the grace you’re thinking of. This grace only comes from killing angels.
What unfolds in this wry, often witty, always irreverent odyssey of revenge is a re-imagining of the Jesus mythology, with a global pantheon of gods, demi-gods, folkloric figures, demons, angels and creatures. It is a breathless race through eras, peccadillos, mysteries and morally questionable moments that is a salad of DC/Marvel comics meets Homer. Darbyshire chooses a first person, unreliable narrator in the form of the main character, Cross, who, in this modern era, gets by in life by lifting credit cards and living rare and hedonistically until his need of further grifting and vampiric siphoning of angelic grace drive him onward toward his goal of finding Judas and finally, utterly, destroying him.
As with any story of this scope of the fantastic, there are huge gaps in credibility, but for the most part these can be forgiven because of the nature of the epic. For myself, I found the characters predictable, some of the plot points beyond plausible, and the story arc repetitious. But that’s me, and certainly my taste is in the minority when you consider the enormous critical praise Darbyshire has received from the likes of The National Post, and Quill & Quire.
If you enjoy irreverent, supernatural thrillers, I suggest you pre-order your copy of The Mona Lisa Sacrifice.
The marketing blurb:
Meet Cross. He’s lived for thousands of years, hungering for grace – but not the grace you’re thinking of. This grace only comes from killing angels.
What unfolds in this wry, often witty, always irreverent odyssey of revenge is a re-imagining of the Jesus mythology, with a global pantheon of gods, demi-gods, folkloric figures, demons, angels and creatures. It is a breathless race through eras, peccadillos, mysteries and morally questionable moments that is a salad of DC/Marvel comics meets Homer. Darbyshire chooses a first person, unreliable narrator in the form of the main character, Cross, who, in this modern era, gets by in life by lifting credit cards and living rare and hedonistically until his need of further grifting and vampiric siphoning of angelic grace drive him onward toward his goal of finding Judas and finally, utterly, destroying him.
As with any story of this scope of the fantastic, there are huge gaps in credibility, but for the most part these can be forgiven because of the nature of the epic. For myself, I found the characters predictable, some of the plot points beyond plausible, and the story arc repetitious. But that’s me, and certainly my taste is in the minority when you consider the enormous critical praise Darbyshire has received from the likes of The National Post, and Quill & Quire.
If you enjoy irreverent, supernatural thrillers, I suggest you pre-order your copy of The Mona Lisa Sacrifice.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews