imyerhero's review against another edition
1.0
Finn Ryan is studying art history and scraping by in New York City when she stumbles upon a long-lost mythical Michelangelo drawing. Immediately after finding it, her life changes forever. People around her are murdered violently and someone is after Finn herself – for no reason she can see. She heads to her last resort for safety – a mysterious man named Michael Valentine who she is only supposed to contact in extreme emergencies. Together, they attempt to find out who is behind the murders and how it is tied to a child raised in a convent in Italy during Hitler’s reign, and a tight circle of art enthusiasts who have a suspicious link to rare and thought-to-be-lost works of art.
I pictured this book being one of those novels which tried to feed off of the Da Vinci Code frenzy, but possibly cooler because it didn’t involve the Catholic Church and did involve one of my favorite artists – Michelangelo. Unfortunately, what I discovered was one of the worst books I’ve read in a great while. It DOES include the Catholic Church and hardly involves Michelangelo at all.
The entire book feels piecemeal in plot. As if the author picked three big plotlines and attempted to find ways to connect them only after they had started writing. Finn herself isn’t bad as a character, although we hear way too much about how pretty she is (including an entire chapter describing her nude – uhhh, no thank you!) Unfortunately, she is the only interesting person in the entire book. The chapters jump back and forth in time – and we have no way if determining if we are in World War II, at the end or the beginning of that war, or in the present day – or somewhere else entirely.
I struggled through most of this, to keep my attention focused on what was going on. And past the first three or four chapters, I stopped caring about anything but finishing the book. I never thought I would praise Dan Brown’s writing, but this author tries and fails so spectacularly to mimic it that I almost wished I had picked up “Angels and Demons” instead.
I pictured this book being one of those novels which tried to feed off of the Da Vinci Code frenzy, but possibly cooler because it didn’t involve the Catholic Church and did involve one of my favorite artists – Michelangelo. Unfortunately, what I discovered was one of the worst books I’ve read in a great while. It DOES include the Catholic Church and hardly involves Michelangelo at all.
The entire book feels piecemeal in plot. As if the author picked three big plotlines and attempted to find ways to connect them only after they had started writing. Finn herself isn’t bad as a character, although we hear way too much about how pretty she is (including an entire chapter describing her nude – uhhh, no thank you!) Unfortunately, she is the only interesting person in the entire book. The chapters jump back and forth in time – and we have no way if determining if we are in World War II, at the end or the beginning of that war, or in the present day – or somewhere else entirely.
I struggled through most of this, to keep my attention focused on what was going on. And past the first three or four chapters, I stopped caring about anything but finishing the book. I never thought I would praise Dan Brown’s writing, but this author tries and fails so spectacularly to mimic it that I almost wished I had picked up “Angels and Demons” instead.
pollyno9's review against another edition
1.0
This book was terrible. Sexist, too much exposition, unrealistic relationships, and nothing to vindicate any of that (like the lightheartedness in a Clive Cussler, or the mystery of James Rollins). Utter trash.
bookthia's review against another edition
1.0
A sorry attempt at the ancient history turned urgent mystery genre. Even Dan Brown does it better and I'm only so-so on him. First beef -- the page from Michelangelo's notebook that starts the book disappears after the 2nd chapter and is never heard from again. Second beef -- adolescent view of women and sex. Third beef -- plot gaps leave the main storylines crudely stuck together with a random paragraph rather than actually connected (two competing motives for the killings turn out to be unrelated). It's not completely horrible. But its close.
canada_matt's review against another edition
4.0
A great intro book to Finn Ryan and her character. i thoroughly enjoyed this my first Paul Christopher novel, although the premise was a little... shall I say, weak? I expected some grand Dan Brownsian adventure with information hidden in the notebook, but was left slightly.... unsure of how I felt about it all.
Christopher has built an interesting base on which Ryan can build and I hope she does, as red heads always have intrigued me.
Christopher has built an interesting base on which Ryan can build and I hope she does, as red heads always have intrigued me.
northcoastwanderer's review
1.0
Awful. Just bloody awful. Should have checked the reviews before buying a book on a whim. I know better. Sucked sucked sucked.
brettt's review
1.0
It's 2005. A top-selling 2003 airport thriller has been in production and will hit theaters next year. So other publishers know exactly what they have to do: Get as many knockoffs of The DaVinci Code into print while people are still interested in secrets contained in centuries-old artwork and manuscripts and shadowy Vatican conspiracies.
So thriller author Christopher Hyde adds the pen name Paul Christopher to his work and offers up Michlangelo's Notebook, a novel which is almost entirely derivative and which is still not any good when it isn't.
Graduate art history student Finola "Finn" Ryan has found something incredible tucked into a back drawer of the works she is cataloging at the museum where she interns. An old, tattered page that may be from the famed lost anatomical sketchbook of Michelangelo himself. But her boss rejects her notion and fires her; then a mysterious assailant attacks her later that evening. Now alone and on the run, Finn calls on an old friend of her late father's, a rare book dealer named Michael Valentine. But Valentine has a past of a different sort, and he will call on those skills to help Finn unravel the conspiracy that endangers her.
Notebook mixes art theft, Vatican conspiracies, puzzle-solving and breathless flight from evil assassins in a tested formula. And Hyde has a much better hand at the keyboard than Brown. His dialogue rings more real, his sentences don't limp and he inserts touches such as an art aficionado noticing a room's paintings and decor before anything else. He switches narrative tone for different viewpoint settings and characters in a way that helps distinguish them.
All that being said, though, Notebook is just about as bad as a knockoff of an already lousy book could be. The flashback scenes take up far more space than they merit. The ending is rushed, with a fairly major plotline ending instead of really being resolved. The whole thing reads like someone bet Hyde he couldn't write a DaVinci Code-like thriller in less than a week and he brought this manuscript back as proof he could. Too many narrative threads, incomplete resolutions, specious "history" fueling the core conspiracy... Notebook hits all the checkpoints. And it adds in a Manic Pixie Dream Girl heroine who speaks and acts exactly the way a middle-aged author would imagine a twenty-something female who begins a romance with a middle-aged book dealer would act.
Hyde would continue the Finn Ryan series and in 2009 offer a second series from the pen of "Paul Christopher." Without having read them, I would be fairly certain they were better than Michelangelo's Notebook. Because it would take a lot of work to make them worse, and nothing about Notebook indicates that this is a series in which Hyde wants to invest that much work.
Original available here.
So thriller author Christopher Hyde adds the pen name Paul Christopher to his work and offers up Michlangelo's Notebook, a novel which is almost entirely derivative and which is still not any good when it isn't.
Graduate art history student Finola "Finn" Ryan has found something incredible tucked into a back drawer of the works she is cataloging at the museum where she interns. An old, tattered page that may be from the famed lost anatomical sketchbook of Michelangelo himself. But her boss rejects her notion and fires her; then a mysterious assailant attacks her later that evening. Now alone and on the run, Finn calls on an old friend of her late father's, a rare book dealer named Michael Valentine. But Valentine has a past of a different sort, and he will call on those skills to help Finn unravel the conspiracy that endangers her.
Notebook mixes art theft, Vatican conspiracies, puzzle-solving and breathless flight from evil assassins in a tested formula. And Hyde has a much better hand at the keyboard than Brown. His dialogue rings more real, his sentences don't limp and he inserts touches such as an art aficionado noticing a room's paintings and decor before anything else. He switches narrative tone for different viewpoint settings and characters in a way that helps distinguish them.
All that being said, though, Notebook is just about as bad as a knockoff of an already lousy book could be. The flashback scenes take up far more space than they merit. The ending is rushed, with a fairly major plotline ending instead of really being resolved. The whole thing reads like someone bet Hyde he couldn't write a DaVinci Code-like thriller in less than a week and he brought this manuscript back as proof he could. Too many narrative threads, incomplete resolutions, specious "history" fueling the core conspiracy... Notebook hits all the checkpoints. And it adds in a Manic Pixie Dream Girl heroine who speaks and acts exactly the way a middle-aged author would imagine a twenty-something female who begins a romance with a middle-aged book dealer would act.
Hyde would continue the Finn Ryan series and in 2009 offer a second series from the pen of "Paul Christopher." Without having read them, I would be fairly certain they were better than Michelangelo's Notebook. Because it would take a lot of work to make them worse, and nothing about Notebook indicates that this is a series in which Hyde wants to invest that much work.
Original available here.
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