Read as part of CBR16 Bingo: golden. The book centers around a fictionalized version of the Knights of the Golden Circle and the book has a quest for gold.
First of all, I had no idea that a secret society called the Knights of the Golden Circle actually existed. Formed in 1852, they had a goal of expanding a slavery empire through the southwest United States, into Mexico and central America, and including the Caribbean. All of this happened before the Civil War and they had planned to make Havana their capital. This all was pretty much the aim of the Confederacy postwar so again, how did I not know about them?
I was excited to read this fictionalized version as well as finally tackle one of Steve Berry’s Cotton Malone books, which are apparently a modern day Indiana Jones crossed with American Treasure.
Tacked on is some political intrigue in which an arcane rule in congress would somehow empower the House of Representatives. This is driven behind the scenes by the knights.
Heck yeah let’s go!
The result? Eh.
It’s not bad, it’s a lot of corny treasure hunt stuff with good guys and bad guys and little ambiguity. The politics are tolerably silly to a point.
But two things…
- It’s unnecessarily long. A quarter of the fight/travel scenes could have been cut to pare the book down 100-200 pages.
- The politics stuff goes from being tolerably silly to outright ridiculous. Whatever “good” ideas some in the Confederacy had, they were pro-slavery seditious war criminals. Alex Stephens’ cornerstone speech laid it out. I don’t care what “good ideas” he might have had about congress before he made the decision to betray his country. Berry tries to put a gloss on it all but the historical stench of slavery should render whatever moot whatever else those clowns said about federal governance.
So yeah, there’s some moments but it didn’t take the directions I would have liked. Nevertheless, I’ll probably read more Berry at some point. His work scratches a specific itch.
