The Eight

Rating:
Summary: This is a must read - and probably the only read for Neville
Review: Hi - this is ellen in Atlanta - Katherine Neville probably wrote one of the most wonderful books ever written in The Eight and although the computer technology is old, the story holds up and it is a thrilling ride that encompasses times and chess and romance.
The only problem with Neville, is she seems to be a one trick pony - her sequels are copies of the original premise and it doesn't work, unfortunately.
But - if you have not read The Eight - it is a must read - and we will keep our fingers crossed that Ms. Neville gets another wonderfully original idea for another timeless book!!!!
The Eight is a classic and I recommend it more than words can say.

Rating:
Summary: Incoherent and Disappointing
Review: The premise is that our heroine is involved in a human chess game that has gone on for centuries. Two stories (from 1793 and 1973) intertwine, and romance and adventure ensue. Or so the author probably hoped.

It was chock-full of confusion (every other character was on some secret mission that was never explained) and name dropping (Let's see: Catherine the Great, George Washington, Napoleon, Robespierre, Ben Franklin, a load of English and French royalty...). Constantly the heroine would run up against handsome men, whose eyes were described for many paragraphs. Their eyes. Over and over. Green eyes. Blue Eyes. Glittering black eyes. I suppose its a little role-reversal fun from James Bond, who has a woman in every port, but I tired quickly of what must be, for some, "romance." Enough with the eyes, aren't you even gonna kiss him?

And as for the "chess" idea, that was just slapped on. There were no "moves." No human "piece" was constrained to move in a certain way. They were all pawns of a writer who was trying to stretch an analogy too thin. Nothing about the book reminded me of chess. This is not Lewis Caroll, where every chapter is really a chess move. The analogy of chess could have been parchisi - there is nothing chesslike about the book at all. Not until the final chapter do you understand who all the players were. Imagine playing a game of chess with checkers, unable to tell a queen from a rook from a pawn, and you'll get an idea of how confusing and pointless this book was.

The chess analogy simply made no sense. She tried to write a female Indiana Jones type story, but then made the mistake of saying it was also a human chess game.

In common with Indiana Jones, this book had a "McGuffin." That's what Alfred Hitchcock used to call the object in a story which all are chasing after. In Indiana Jones, it might be the holy grail, or the lost ark of the covenant. The McGuffin in The Eight is an ancient chess set with magical powers. Not until the last few chapters of the book do you even learn its powers.

Eternal life, okay? That's the power of the chess set everyone wants. There. Now at least if you read this lousy book, you'll understand a tiny bit of why everyone is acting so weird all the time. Oh, and the guy with the green eyes is the one she ends up with. And the heroine is (unwittingly) the white queen.

This book was recommended by Amazon, since I liked the excellent "Da Vinci code." They probably got a shipment of these cheap, or something.

It is not a good story. It is not well told. You will be able to put it down. I just did.

Rating:
Summary: Well researched and--well, boring
Review: The subject of this book has always fascinated me. I've thoroughly enjoyed Tom Robbin's "Still Life with Woodpecker, Eco's "Foucaults Pendulum", Neal Stephenson's "Cryptonomicon", Robert Anton Wilson's books, and even "Gravity's Rainbow" which all deal at various levels with hidden global conspiracies that are "really" behind history as we know it, and so it was with great anticipation that I picked up "The Eight". I loved the epic scale of the story, I loved all the historical references, puzzles, mind benders, chess quotes, etc. However, the prose all seems to have one pace, lacks real tension and release, and plods along dutifully to resolution. This book should have excited me but I found myself picking up one of several books I was reading at the time instead of racing to complete "The Eight".

Rating:
Summary: Stellar!
Review: Great read. Kept me spellbound. In my opionion the best of Katherine Neville's books. The change of time period was really well timed. All in all an outstanding read for the history nut, the chess buff, and a little bit for the romance enthusiast too.

Rating:
Summary: I like it
Review: but am finding it difficult to finish it as it revolves around "chess" which I like in theory, but know too little about to really appreciate the fine points of this book. I suspect it's a real page-turner for chess players. Well written and articulate book.

Rating:
Summary: Great!
Review: I just didnt want to read another book after i finished this one, something like there were no books that good, i really liked it. I recomemd this one.

Rating:
Summary: Good escapist read
Review: The book has two stories, one that takes place in Revolutionary France, and one that takes place in 1970s America and Algeria. Usually when a book has two plotlines like this I find myself favoring one over the other, but that was not the case in this one. I really enjoyed the story of Mireille and Valentine in the 1700s, and Catherine's narrative in the 1970s. There were so many historical figures play parts in the book--Napoleon, Catherine the Great, and Khaddafi (what a group!) There was a great amount of action in this book--intrigue, espionage, murder, and chess! One minute the story is in New York, the next they are stranded in the Sahara... it was fun to follow the "players" as they traveled around the world.

Rating:
Summary: Mind candy
Review: Others have described the plot so I won't. This book is an average adventure. Don't expect the plot or characters to stand up to close scrutiny. The plot is a string of convenient events, and the characters aren't much more than the chess pieces they stand in for. The heroine is annoying at points; she's quite without common sense yet manages to have amazing insights that no one else in history did.

The cover blurb compares this book to _The Name of the Rose_, but they don't have much in common. _Foucault's Pendulum_ would be a closer comparison, but this is the kind of story that Eco was making fun of. Nevertheless it's a fun read as long as you don't think about it too much.

BTW a number of people deride this as being like a romance novel. Not exactly. Good romance novels have character development so that you understand why couples fall in love. The romance in this book is like a *bad* romance novel. This is the romantic character development in this book: hero=long golden locks+mysterious+always being in the right place, and heroine=feisty+always being in the right place. Frankly I don't think Harlequin would be caught dead publishing that.

Rating:
Summary: At least 200 pages too long
Review: This would have been an interesting book if it was only 400 pages long. The only truly charming character was killed off in the first 200 pages, and it's hard to care about any of the rest of them. The book had an interesting premise, and would have been interesting if it was significantly tightened up.

Rating:
Summary: Borderline 4 stars out of 5
Review: As I make an effort to review every book I read whether good, bad or indifferent, I find myself almost at a loss for words over this one. It has some really interesting pages intermingled with a lot of boring ones that I found myself skimming over.

The book centers around a chess set once owned by Charlemagne and said to have some sort of magic power. The set somehow ends up in the possession of the Montglane Church and hence, referred to as the Montglane service. The heads of the church realize that its power can be used to promote evil intentions and thus, sequester the service within the Church walls. There it remains for several centuries and its legend grows.

With the outset of the French Revolution, some of the leaders of the revolution have a goal to confiscate the service to further their power. The Abbess of the church is forewarned and has the service dug up and its pieces given to several of the nuns to hide in various parts of Europe. The most prevalent of these nuns is a young woman named Mirelle (who really shouldn't have been a nun because of her feral life-style). As Mirelle is set upon by the evil leaders of the revolution she starts to piece together the secret of the Montglane service.

The story interlays a separate tale of a young woman (Katherine) in the early 1980's who is sent on an assignment to Algiers to help start up OPEC. Katherine is warned by a fortune teller about the dangers that lie ahead and also asked by a friend to try to obtain pieces of the Montglane service while in Algiers. Along the way Katherine is dragged into a chess tournament where one of the player is murdered and Katherine is shot at. She also seems to be involved in a huge game of intrigue with a Russian chess player who appears to be KGB, a mysterious recluse named Nim, a wealthy female chess player named Lily and another chess guru named Mordecai.

As Katherine embarks to Algiers she seems earmarked to follow a similar path that Mirelle had followed 200 years prior and be the one to re-unite all the parts of the Montglane service.

One of the reasons I didn't give this book a higher rating is that people are murdered around Katherine, yet nothing really happens to her even though everyone seems to know that she may play an important role in re-uniting the service. I periodically play chess for fun but am not a student of vast strategies of the game. The whole book seems to revolve around complex chess strategies, which should make the book extremely interesting for chess aficionados. Additionally, Katherine's portions of the tale are told in first-person, which kills some of the mystery because you already know that she will survive all the dangers she faces.