A page turner like "The Davinci Code"...Steve Berry's best book!

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	• The Amber Room: A Novel Steve Berry Ballantine Books, 2007 - 464 pages average customer review:based on 100 reviews view larger image
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A page turner like "The Davinci Code"...Steve Berry's best book!

This book was recommended after reading the Divinci Code and all of Dan Browns books. This is definatley a page turner with action, adventure and history.

A SUPERBLY READ SUSPENSEFUL DEBUT

To borrow an old radio show title, "I Love A Mystery"! For me, the mystery is even more intriguing when it is based on an actual occurrence, a crime that to date remains unsolved. So often in the case of an event that has garnered much newsprint, many will offer solutions or imagined scenarios based on the incident. Such is the case with this suspenseful debut novel, superbly read by actor/writer Scott Brick.

In actuality, the Amber Room was a hall like structure with walls covered in amber and semiprecious stones. Presented by Germany to Russia's Czar Peter the Great in 1716, it was lost when the Germans overran Russia during World War II. Theories abound as to its fate, and Steve Berry's well thought tale brings it to the fore once again.

Judge Rachel Cutler is one tough cookie as we learn in the opening of The Amber Room. She's good at what she does and enjoys doing it. Her father has what he believes are clues as to the location of the Amber Room and when he dies unexpectedly, the secrets he has kept are made known.

Cutler doesn't believe for a moment that her father's death was due to natural causes, so she and her ex husband, Paul, go to Germany in search of answers. Little do they know that they're not alone in their quest - others seek to discover the whereabouts of the Amber Room, including two unscrupulous collectors who compete to find lost or stolen pieces of art.

Thus begins an exciting danger filled chase throughout Europe. Stakes are high and lives imperiled in this quest for a treasure. Narrator Scott Brick has a mantel crowded with awards for his voice performances. One more may well be on its way for his reading of The Amber Room.

Highly recommended.

- Gail Cooke

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Interesting history, far fetched fiction

I enjoy Russian history a lot, so when a friend lent me this book, I was eager to read it despite it not being a genre I generally read. I'm not even sure what to call it. Fiction Thriller? It's very much in the vein of The DaVinci code. I don't know if that book's popularity has created its own sub-genre yet or not.

I thought Berry's prose was pretty tight. It was a fast read with a spare style that I quite enjoyed. I will say that it was obviously written by a man. And I don't mean that in any sort of derogatory way. It's just that I generally read women authors and stylistically (in the stuff I've read), the gender divide in prose is pretty pronounced. At one point, he used the term "inviting crotch" to describe a woman's appeal. That did make me cringe. But I'm also not too fond of "velvet swords" either.

I thought the history of the Amber Room was handled very well within the plot of the book. It felt as though Berry really went out of his way to include a good deal of historical fact and as someone who enjoys Russian history, I liked that. As a reader, I enjoyed that Berry managed to convey the information without having his characters turn into talking heads.

The fictional story itself was okay. Not great. Not awful, just okay, though it did really wane toward the end of the book. And let me clarify that by wane, I mean in interest. I felt the book went from having some pretty compelling, realistic characters to being off the charts absurd action.

The book ostensibly centers around the Cutler family, Rachel and Paul (divorced), their children and both of their deceased (and possibly murdered) parents. Truth be told, the Cutlers don't get the majority of the plot time. There is a lot of plot involving this secret society of European billionaire art collectors and their staff.

All of the connections between the characters were messy. It seemed there was a push-pull between every set of characters. I'm not sure if that was realistic, or just sloppy. Most of the characters were working on their own agendas. I found it interesting that while the male characters could quite cheerfully smile and laugh with each other and then turn around and stab one another in the back, none of them ever seemed to take it personally. The female characters were every bit as self-involved and murderous, but the readers were often privy to them thinking of each other as bitches and whores. That didn't particularly impress me.

The historical perspective on the Amber Room was well done. All in all, it was a decent read even if I did roll an eye or two toward the end.

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Berry has written better books

The Amber Room was a pretty cookie-cutter conspiracy-theory art-history globe-trotting adventure book. We've seen a lot of these lately, and I've always enjoyed Steve Berry's books. His writing has progressed through each novel he's put out, but the Amber Room is only his 2nd book, and wasn't as strong as say, The Templar Legacy. I enjoyed the Amber Room as it was not a story I was familiar with. Plus I love the mystery behind Nazi pilfered art during WWII. There were great descriptors about how the Nazi's affected post-war art and antiques and the mystery behind the Amber Room, which disappeared at the end of the war. It included a good deal of historical locations, and plenty of action with a high body count, but there were some moderately corny parts. Our heroes Rachel and Paul are divorced, but their inner dialogues are contemplating their relationship throughout the entire novel. The epilogue wrapped everything up nicely, but it seemed almost too easy of a conclusion after all that had happened throughout the adventure. A decent, quick read, but there are better books in this genre out there...

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Fascinating historical fiction

I bought The Romanov Prophecy: A Novel, The Amber Room: A Novel and The Rozabal Line together and read them over six weeks. I love this genre of historical fiction in which it becomes difficult to know when the transition between history and fiction is happening (I sometimes wonder what will happen if these novels are discovered a few thousand years later by our future generations and they consider these novels as history:-) In all three books there is a basic historical premise and that central historical premise is "massaged" to produce fiction. In Romanov, the fact that the children of the last Tsar may have survived; in Rozabal the fact that Jesus may have children in India who are Islamic terrorists; In Amber, the possibility that exquisite art panels from Catherine's palace in Russia may survive. I thank Dan Brown for having inspired so many wonderful mysteries that have a historical basis.

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