The government is evil, they are sneaky, they are hiding things and we had all better beware. Starting in the future, and then leaping back and forth through the past, we follow Kalista Flaker, a special Ops soldier who has risen in rank due to her ferocious demeanor and obsessive nature. When she and her team are deliberately sent on a suicide mission, Kalista begins to dig into the nature of the government beast that has been controlling her for all of those years, and uncovers a disturbing truth. Determined to bring down the system and expose the lies, she makes it her mission to obtain proof of the vast conspiracy.Kuykendall has a very distinct voice and an excellent writing style. For conspiracy theorists that border on obsessive, this book will be a goldmine. Beginning with the Area 51 cover up, to the Bay of Pigs, to the tragedy of 9/11, it almost feels as though the author was determined to cover every conspiracy known to man. The author has done their historical research, and much of this book does read as though you are in a history class, giving you almost too much background on events like the Bay of Pigs, or the History of different military groups. But the author weaves his own take on the events into the tale, giving the "truth behind the conspiracy" that he has invented, some times they are intriguing, other times they seem to go a bit overboard.
The opening of the book is a bit muddled in that we leap around in time so much that if you don't carefully read the dates at the top of thechapters, it will be easy to find yourself perplexed. When you get past the initial history lesson, and into the story of Kalista and her team,the book really gets moving. I flew through the middle of the book, which reads like a military espionage tale. I was a very happy readeruntil about the last 30 pages of the book, when the tale went a bit sideways in my mind. Truly, the Sci-fi aspect had been there from thebeginning, we are reading about an alternate reality... the government has created a serum from alien DNA to create super soldiers... I boughtit all, but when we came to the end my suspension of disbelief wouldn't stretch that far. I don't want to spoil it, but it seemed almost as ifit was a throwaway ending that dumped way too many new conspiracies and sci-fi aspects on the reader out of nowhere.
Now I'm not saying that it's a bad ending, it just wasn't to my taste. I can probably name a handful of people who will absolutely love theending of this book. Also the book leaves the ending open enough to imply that this may be the beginning of a series, following Kalista andher brother in their attempts to save mankind from ultimate destruction. I would be interested in reading additional entries in this series, the author's writing style is very fluid, and apart from a few lines that irked me this is a very well written book (on of my biggest pet peevesin reading is when siblings address each other as "Brother" or "Sister", I've never in my life heard anyone calling their sibling that).
Final summary: Though I would not recommend this book across the board, I would recommend it to the military/sci-fi crew and to the fans ofconspiracy theories. If this becomes a series I can see this book developing a small but rabid fanbase.
3.5 of 5 Medallions
Conspirator's Odyssey: The Evolution of the Patron Saint (Paperback)
227 pages
Publisher: PublishAmerica (March 3, 2008)
Language: English ISBN-10: 1604742755
