bookworm_brad's review against another edition
4.0
Having enjoyed the first Chase Baker book, The Shroud Key, I was really keen to continue with the series. This book again follows the exploits of The Man In The Yellow Hat as he is hired to seek out a mysterious ancient flying machine from the Incan age hidden in Peru not far from Machu Piccu.
This is definitely an adventure in the style of Indiana Jones/Romancing The Stone/Tomb Raider (the ones with Angelina Jolie) etc but with more sex and violence. But hey, that's what I liked about the first book. It's a well paced romp and kept me intrigued all the way through. The narrator, Andrew B. Wehrlen, does an excellent job and is a pleasure to listen to.
There are a few inconsistencies or anomalies that affected the overall believability though such as how does the benefactor know from a pencil drawing that the Condor craft is Golden? How does the highly experienced explorer Chase Baker get ambushed by people who were clearly behind him originally but somehow manage to get in front of him without apparent problems even though Chase is taking the quickest route? Maybe the benefactor should have hired them instead as they could have got there quicker?
Also, much as I'm happy to accept that maybe there were ancient astronauts who piloted this hidden flying machine why does everyone keep saying it's 1000 years old and if it's only 1000 years old how on earth does that change the origins of humans? Civilisation was well established on Earth much longer than 1000 years ago so that made no sense to me. This could have been a single visit at any point in history and doesn't suggest a change to human evolution.
All that aside though, it was fun to listen to and I'll certainly be looking forward to the next in the series.
This is definitely an adventure in the style of Indiana Jones/Romancing The Stone/Tomb Raider (the ones with Angelina Jolie) etc but with more sex and violence. But hey, that's what I liked about the first book. It's a well paced romp and kept me intrigued all the way through. The narrator, Andrew B. Wehrlen, does an excellent job and is a pleasure to listen to.
There are a few inconsistencies or anomalies that affected the overall believability though such as how does the benefactor know from a pencil drawing that the Condor craft is Golden? How does the highly experienced explorer Chase Baker get ambushed by people who were clearly behind him originally but somehow manage to get in front of him without apparent problems even though Chase is taking the quickest route? Maybe the benefactor should have hired them instead as they could have got there quicker?
Also, much as I'm happy to accept that maybe there were ancient astronauts who piloted this hidden flying machine why does everyone keep saying it's 1000 years old and if it's only 1000 years old how on earth does that change the origins of humans? Civilisation was well established on Earth much longer than 1000 years ago so that made no sense to me. This could have been a single visit at any point in history and doesn't suggest a change to human evolution.
All that aside though, it was fun to listen to and I'll certainly be looking forward to the next in the series.
dodau's review against another edition
4.0
This is the second in a series and I flew through it which surprised me as I struggled with the first. This was a shorter book by about 50ish pages if i remember correctly so it may have been that though the plot on this seemed tighter than the first.
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