My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Two MIT nerds, while being handled—that is coerced—by the CIA develop software that scans images of Earth, made by the Kepler Deep Space Telescope, for deposits of precious metals. They are unable to debug the software and are frustrated for a couple of years. Then Jack Drago finds a debugging algorithm that was developed at Harvard. It solves the problem and he is able to print a plot of an area in the Bolivian Alto Plano showing deposits of gold, silver, uranium, and something else. The CIA immediately pulls the plug on their operation. Jack is warned of his eminent arrest by girlfriend Hanna, who is head of campus security. Jack and his cohort, Frannie, AKA Francis, are determined to go to Bolivia to discover what this anomaly might be, and to prevent the CIA from seizing it.
That’s where this story unravels. The artifact is of extraterrestrial origin, and in fact the US military already has one that was discovered in Egypt during the First World War. They don’t know what it is or what to do with it. The reader never discovers why it’s a threat to mankind. However, the indigenous Bolivians know of it and revere it as something to be protected. The thing is just a little too bizarre and inexplicable be taken seriously. When the action starts, the story devolves into poor dialogue and improbable events by characters who aren’t very believable. I realize there is a reason we call this fiction, but one needs a shred of plausibility. It is as if this book were written by two people. The first half is concise and logical with good prose solid technology. Then something happens. This reader was severely let down by the second half of the book. And the ending? Well, I don’t know what the ending was, but it wasn’t very satisfying.
Highly Opinionated 