Oldies But Goodies
{Put This One on Your TBR List}
Book Review: The Codex
by Douglas Preston
by Karen S. Wiesner
Be aware that there may be spoilers in this review.
Last week I reviewed Douglas Preston's Wyman Ford Series. In the first book in that series, Tyrannosaur Canyon, published in 2005, the main character the series is named for doesn't come into the story until much later. Instead, the protagonist in the first book through most of the story is Tom Broadbent, a former code breaker. Broadbent was the main character in Preston's 2003 standalone thriller novel, The Codex, along with his sidekick Sally Colorado. In The Codex, both protagonists were drawn with deep, compelling characterization that I can't deny would have really made the Wyman Ford Series worth reading (in fact, I wish Wyman Ford had been taken out altogether so the series could include Broadbent and Colorado as main characters instead).
In this story, Tom and his two brothers' father Maxwell is a notorious treasure hunter and tomb robber. In his lifetime, he accumulated more than half a billion dollars' worth of rare art, jewels, and artifacts. When Maxwell gathers his three grown, estranged sons to his New Mexico estate, they arrive to find that all his treasure is missing. Robbery is suspected until they find a cryptic message from Maxwell, telling them he's devised a final test for them to discover his tomb treasure trove. Winner takes all. Tom's two brothers can hardly wait and enlist private investigators and mercenaries. But they're far from the only ones searching for this rare, priceless hoard of items.
Tom isn't interested in the treasure at all, at least not until a drop-dead gorgeous ethnopharmacologist (explanation for that mouthful: medicinal products used by isolated or primitive people are investigated using modern scientific methods) contacts him. Sally Colorado tells Tom that years ago his dad tried to present a Mayan Codex to a museum for translation. Without experts in the language at that time, the museum rejected it. But, now that ancient Mayan has been deciphered, Sally and her Yale professor fiancé believe ancient herbal remedies contained within that Codex could revolutionize modern medicine and lead to cures for diseases. Reluctantly, Tom agrees to help them track down his father's treasure trove in Central America, where the Codex is presumably hidden.
In the course of multiple, thrilling twists and turns and near-death experiences, Tom, Sally, and his brothers discover they have another brother--the true eldest son of their father. Borabay is associated with the native Tara tribe who live below the White City--a mountain temple in Honduras. The chief of the tribe tells Tom and his brothers that their cancer-ridden father asked to be poisoned and buried with his treasure in the White City. However, the chief only gave him a drink that rendered him unconscious. So now the siblings must rescue their father along with reaching the treasure before the other hunters in hot pursuit get to it first.
As I said of this author in previous reviews of his work, he excels at providing authentic settings and scenarios that seem utterly believable, in large part because Preston himself is an adventurer. Having studied mathematics, biology, physics, anthropology, and English literature, he's been a curator at a museum and a writer for National Geographic and Smithsonian, among other notable publications. With a friend, Preston once retraced on horseback a thousand miles of Coronado's route across Arizona and New Mexico--and nearly killed themselves in the process--in order to research a book. Preston's outstanding core elements are combined with The Codex's high-stakes plot and contain all the necessary complications and layers that provide unremitting suspense and action.
While often Preston's characterization leaves much to be desired, that's not the case here. The protagonists in The Codex are beautifully drawn and fleshed out. Tom and Sally are such genuine, appealing characters from start to finish. I was rooting for them to succeed in their quest and fall in love. They really should have a series of their own. It's too bad Wyman Ford, such a cardboard character, took center stage in the Wyman Ford Series because I really believe Tom and Sally would have brought that sequence to life instead of simply starring in it intermittently (but powerfully) in the first book of it. If you're a fan of Lara Croft Tomb Raider type adventure stories that take you to ancient civilizations and feature brave, compelling, worthy heroes and heroines, this one has everything you could want and more.
Karen Wiesner is an
award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.
Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/
and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog
Find out more about her books
and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor
Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/
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