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Robert Beveridge's Reviews > The Eight
The Eight (The Eight, #1)
by
by
Katherine Neville, The Eight (Ballantine, 1988)
This novel has achieved almost cult status in some circles, and many people consider it one of the best adventure novels ever written. It's a useful way to separate folks you know into two categories: those who are more interested in plot, and those who are more interested in writing.
The plot is pretty darn good, when it comes right down to it. The novel takes place in two parallel times, the first being 1972 and the second the years during and after the French Revolution. Both plot lines center around the search for a mystical chess set and attempts to discover the human counterparts to various pieces (the hero and villain in each time line are the Black and White Queens, respectively; very nice little twist, that). The board, once complete, will supposedly impart unlimited power to he who possesses it, and thus leaders from Marat and Catherine the Great to Muammar Khaddafi run throughout the book, looking to get their hands on it. The pace is quick, the action almost nonstop (the present-day time line is quicker-paced and much more compelling, but the past ain't all that bad).
The writing, on the other hand, is almost painful in places. Neville descends in to the realm of clich茅 at least once per chapter, at times more than once per page. Clumsy attempts at foreshadowing (you know the type: "but I never thought, when I woke up in the morning, that this day would change my life forever!") are more commonplace here than in a whole shelf of novels by Bulwer-Lytton. It's possible that Ms. Neville took the nineteenth-century definition of "romance novel" a tad too seriously for being a twentieth-century writer. And this is certainly an unique experience in that regard; a classic nineteenth-century romance novel written, all too often, like a Harlequin circa 1985.
All in all, it is a fun little book requiring great suspension of disbelief. I'd have given it another star if part of my suspension of disbelief didn't have to be in the author's writing ability.
This novel has achieved almost cult status in some circles, and many people consider it one of the best adventure novels ever written. It's a useful way to separate folks you know into two categories: those who are more interested in plot, and those who are more interested in writing.
The plot is pretty darn good, when it comes right down to it. The novel takes place in two parallel times, the first being 1972 and the second the years during and after the French Revolution. Both plot lines center around the search for a mystical chess set and attempts to discover the human counterparts to various pieces (the hero and villain in each time line are the Black and White Queens, respectively; very nice little twist, that). The board, once complete, will supposedly impart unlimited power to he who possesses it, and thus leaders from Marat and Catherine the Great to Muammar Khaddafi run throughout the book, looking to get their hands on it. The pace is quick, the action almost nonstop (the present-day time line is quicker-paced and much more compelling, but the past ain't all that bad).
The writing, on the other hand, is almost painful in places. Neville descends in to the realm of clich茅 at least once per chapter, at times more than once per page. Clumsy attempts at foreshadowing (you know the type: "but I never thought, when I woke up in the morning, that this day would change my life forever!") are more commonplace here than in a whole shelf of novels by Bulwer-Lytton. It's possible that Ms. Neville took the nineteenth-century definition of "romance novel" a tad too seriously for being a twentieth-century writer. And this is certainly an unique experience in that regard; a classic nineteenth-century romance novel written, all too often, like a Harlequin circa 1985.
All in all, it is a fun little book requiring great suspension of disbelief. I'd have given it another star if part of my suspension of disbelief didn't have to be in the author's writing ability.
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Reading Progress
Started Reading
September 1, 2002
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Finished Reading
January 23, 2008
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by
Irene
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rated it 3 stars
Apr 19, 2009 04:07PM
So true. "LITTLE DID I KNOW HOW IMPORTANT THIS WOULD TURN OUT TO BE!!!" Dun dun dunnnnn!
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I like your review because this is exactly how I was thinking about the book, but I didn't put it as succinctly as you did. "...those who are more interested in plot, and those who are more interested in writing." I'm definitely in the latter group.
Hard to separate people into two categories - but writing/plot are helpful distinction of the rating. Thanks
well put. it is the only book of hers I was able to read with commitment but I loved this book anyway.
It鈥檚 postulational and sometimes it seems a reminder thereabouts is needed. But if you look carefully her book is tightly plotted. For instance: ...the wife of David is the nun who is dispatched to the abbey to activate the sinister novice to her duties thereby wrenching the efforts of the more unsuspecting novice (to fulfill duty while combatting evil) into the Herculean sphere. You can really come away spent in the rereads.
