Book Review: The Last Ember

The Last Ember was one of those books I picked up while I was walking around my new library.  They had it listed as one of those "Readers Choice" books.  Once again it took me a while to read this one. Lately I'm not consuming books like I used to...must be the season.  My initial thought after finishing this book was...that felt more like a history lesson and a wanna be davinci code book. Don't get me wrong, I love history, and I love reading about hidden chambers...lost items, those mysteries are fascinating.  This book takes place mainly in Rome and in Jerusalem.  With all the different historical sites they mention, I wish I had a map nearby so I could put a picture with the words. I enjoyed the book. If you liked Davinci Code, you'll probably liked this one too. Here's a synopsis... (taken from www.bn.com)

"An Italian antiquities squad discovers a woman's preserved corpse inside an ancient column. Pages torn from priceless manuscripts litter the floor of an abandoned warehouse. An illegal excavation burrows beneath Jerusalem's Dome of the rome, ground sacred to three religions.  Jonathan Marcus a young American lawyer and a former doctoral student in classics, has become a sought-after commodity among antiguities dealers. But when he is summoned to Rome to examine a client's fragment of an ancient stone map, he stumbles across a startling secert: a hidden message carved inside the stone itself. The discovery propels him on a perilous journey from the labyrinth beneath the Colosseum to the biblical-era tunnels of Jerusalem in search of a hidden 2,000-year-old artifact sought by empires throughout the ages. As MArcus and a passionate UN preservationist, Dr. Emili Travia, dig more deeply into the past, they're stunned to discover not only an anicent intelligence operation to protect the artifact, but also a ruthless modern plot to destroy all trace of it by a mysterious radical bent on erasing every remnant of Jewish and Christian presence from the Temple Mount. With a cutting-edge plot as intricately layered as the ancient sites it explores, The Last Ember is a gripping thriller spanning the high-stakes worlds of archaeology, politics, and terrorism in its portrayal of the modern struggle to define—and redefine—history itself."