I won a digital copy of this book in a Goodreads Giveaway. While this is the second book in the series, it worked well as a standalone novel.
This book had a little bit of everything in it. It starts out like a historical fiction book and begins in 1922 in Russia. It then advances to 1999 in Copenhagen with the rest of the book taking place in 2049. Additionally, it takes us around the globe covering incidents in Russia, Denmark, South Aftica, Sweden, France, off the coast of Chile, Austria, and Macau. A variety of topics are woven into the storyline including environmental degradation on earth, toxic acid rain, missing Russian treasures, intelligent spheres that have arrived on earth and established contact with humanity, domestic abuse, human cloning and other genetic research, work and personal relationships overlapping, and advanced technology especially with virtual reality, drones, holographic communications and driverless vehicles.
The Amber Group has been hired to retrieve a lost treasure. However, a secret organization is also pursuing this treasure. This interaction makes for an action-packed science fiction technothriller. Our main protaganist, Jonathan Jarl (who works for the Amber Group) is in a race to recover the lost artifact, but at the same time, there are a lot of other things going on in the plot.
The book constantly goes back and forth between several groups of people and this made it a somewhat bumpy read for me. However, the characters were well-developed and I did enjoy the book. If you enjoy the genre, I recommend that you give it a try.