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A review by courtneylee87
The Mask of Atreus by A.J. Hartley
1.0
Initially, I thought the combination of Nazi stolen loot and ancient Greek treasure seemed promising. However, after the first few chapters that proved to be false. Deborah’s character has no depth and is too clueless to believe that she is a museum curator. Everything is always “just out of reach” to the point where it is a plot hindrance rather than a character quirk. Her conversations with other characters only serve to showcase the author’s own racist and sexist ideas/opinions.
The plot was the worst part of the reading experience. It was patchwork at best, twisting and turning with additions that made little to no sense. The weak connection between “the mask of Atreus” and World War II was pathetic and irritating. The author should have chosen one or the other: a hunt for ancient Homeric treasure or a hunt for Nazi treasure. It may not have fixed the problem with the character arcs, but it would have been more logical.
The author uses generalization when delivering historical “facts” in this book and that is such a taboo when writing historical fiction. Generalizations are the enemy of history and its interpretation. It leads to dangerous rhetoric and cancel-culture. But again, the author’s prejudices come across so loud on the page that even narrowing it down and doing proper research still would not have helped this novel. This honestly read as a first draft of a manuscript from a student in a creative writing course who is not seriously interested in learning the craft of storytelling.
That said, I gave this book a 1 star rating. I will not be reading this author again because I found his storytelling disrespectful to history itself and the thriller novel genre and, more importantly, disrespectful to minorities. Hiding behind a Nazi in a fictional story does not make it okay for prejudice to spill onto the page without a clear reason.
The plot was the worst part of the reading experience. It was patchwork at best, twisting and turning with additions that made little to no sense. The weak connection between “the mask of Atreus” and World War II was pathetic and irritating. The author should have chosen one or the other: a hunt for ancient Homeric treasure or a hunt for Nazi treasure. It may not have fixed the problem with the character arcs, but it would have been more logical.
The author uses generalization when delivering historical “facts” in this book and that is such a taboo when writing historical fiction. Generalizations are the enemy of history and its interpretation. It leads to dangerous rhetoric and cancel-culture. But again, the author’s prejudices come across so loud on the page that even narrowing it down and doing proper research still would not have helped this novel. This honestly read as a first draft of a manuscript from a student in a creative writing course who is not seriously interested in learning the craft of storytelling.
That said, I gave this book a 1 star rating. I will not be reading this author again because I found his storytelling disrespectful to history itself and the thriller novel genre and, more importantly, disrespectful to minorities. Hiding behind a Nazi in a fictional story does not make it okay for prejudice to spill onto the page without a clear reason.