rollie3 reviewed on 3/7/2011

The review on the back of this book that compared it to the movie National Treasure was spot on. I really wanted to like this book, and perhaps I need to change the context in which I view it. Like National Treasure, it aspires to intellectualism but gets caught up in wise-guy dialogue and badly sketched out characters. There's so much good fiction out there that I can't suspend my disbelief enough to be OK with characters who feel it necessary to banter with each other despite the life-or-death situations of their loved ones. The plot was extremely contrived....but to be fair, so were the plots of the Dan Brown novels I found far more enjoyable. I guess Illuminated just seemed like a Dan Brown parody to me, and the twist is that it wasn't a parody at all.

Like National Treasure, I found it mildly entertaining/amusing as I got through it, but I wouldn't put myself through it again. Having hoped for greater things, I already received the sequel through PBS, but if book 2 proves to be in the same vein as this one, I'll stop there.

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