Douglas Preston is back, this time with the help of his daughter, Aletheia. In the follow up to Douglas Preston’s 2024 novel, Extinction, the authors weave a tale with the head of John the Baptist at its core. The book is fast-paced and well written, and has an engrossing plot that somehow manages to get from John the Baptist to alien artifacts without falling apart. I won’t elaborate on the intricacies of that feat, but suffice to say that it’s an interesting enough read… with a caveat!
As a standalone novel, this story would have been great, but as a follow up to a book about de-extinction and neanderthals, it falls a little flat. The first book had wooly mammoths and cavemen, and a sort of Jurassic Park style villain. This book paid lip-service to the neanderthals without providing anything really worthwhile, then became a novel about something entirely different. After the events of Extinction, I was disappointed not to learn any new facts about the de-extinction world, while ending up in what was essentially a religious mystery bundled with alien conspiracy theories.
Don’t get me wrong, the novel reads like a Douglas Preston book, for sure. But for me, it missed the mark a little by not elaborating on the events of the first book and veering into unrelated territory… hence 4 stars not 5.
