The Last Ember

Some of the reviews I’ve read liken Daniel Levin’s novel The Last Ember to Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code. I haven’t read Brown’s book so I have no point of reference but I will tell you the comparison I drew most often was that of the movie National Treasure (of which my family is a HUGE fan).

All the elements that made National Treasure such a smart movie are featured in The Last Ember: A hunt for lost treasure. A brilliant protagonist and an equally brilliant love interest. Conspiracy theories galore. Persistent bad guys. Betrayal. Adventure. And history. Lots and lots of history. Where National Treasure featured the American Revolution, The Last Ember is steeped in the ancient civilizations of Rome and the Holy Land.

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 Rock, 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 less-scrupulous antiquities dealers. But when he is summoned to Rome to examine a client’s fragment of an ancient stone map, he stumbles across a startling secret. The discovery reveals not only an ancient intelligence operation to protect an artifact hidden for 2000 years, but also a ruthless modern plot to destroy all trace of it by a mysterious radical bent on erasing all remnants 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 riveting tale spanning the high-stakes worlds of archaeology, politics, and terrorism, in its portrayal of the modern struggle to define — and redefine– history itself.

The Last Ember is a fast paced thrill ride from the Coliseum to the Temple Mount and back again. What results is an imaginative and exciting story that was difficult to put down. I will admit that the historical background, while thorough, seemed a little heavy at times, particularly in the beginning. It’s clear that Levin not only knows his stuff but he can tell a completely fascinating story about archeology of all things. Really well done.

Interested? Check out an excerpt here.

Wife and mother, Bible teacher and blogger, Lisa loves Jesus, coffee, dark chocolate and, of course, books. Read more of her reflections at Lisa writes….