Review: The Book of Blood and Shadow by Robin Wasserman

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Title:  The Book of Blood and Shadow
Author:  Robin Wasserman
Series:  unknown
Publisher:  Random House Children's Books
Publication Date:  April 10, 2012
Source:  ARC

It was like a nightmare, but there was no waking up. When the night began, Nora had two best friends and an embarrassingly storybook one true love. When it ended, she had nothing but blood on her hands and an echoing scream that stopped only when the tranquilizers pierced her veins and left her in the merciful dark.

But the next morning, it was all still true: Chris was dead. His girlfriend Adriane, Nora's best friend, was catatonic. And Max, Nora's sweet, smart, soft-spoken Prince Charming, was gone. He was also—according to the police, according to her parents, according to everyone—a murderer.

Desperate to prove his innocence, Nora follows the trail of blood, no matter where it leads. It ultimately brings her to the ancient streets of Prague, where she is drawn into a dark web of secret societies and shadowy conspirators, all driven by a mad desire to possess something that might not even exist. For buried in a centuries-old manuscript is the secret to ultimate knowledge and communion with the divine; it is said that he who controls the Lumen Dei controls the world. Unbeknownst to her, Nora now holds the crucial key to unlocking its secrets. Her night of blood is just one piece in a puzzle that spans continents and centuries. Solving it may be the only way she can save her own life.

I’m going to be honest. This is going to be a hard review to write. Not because I didn’t like the book – I LOVED IT – but because I’m so afraid of accidentally spoiling something. I didn’t read a single review before plunging into this book, and I can honestly say I was pleasantly shocked at the direction the novel took at times, throwing me for loop after loop. I respect and admire a book that can keep me guessing, and The Book of Blood and Shadow did just that.

Robin Wasserman expertly weaves a beguiling tale, full of rich history and the menace of an unseen threat. It’s clear in the writing and in the story that the author did extensive research in preparation for this book, and she even discusses it briefly in the afterword. Though much of the story is based on actual events, much more is based on a fabled device that would allow the user to converse directly with God. The knowledge of the very existence of this mythical machine has put the lives of Nora – and her closest friends – in jeopardy.

The first half of the story is set at a leisurely pace, carefully crafting the back-story for our characters, showing how well-developed their friendship was and how they were simply normal teenagers, working on an independent study project for school. The story may develop gradually at first but it never feels bogged down in the history of the study group, nor is it weighed down by the actual history of the subject matter being researched. The author balances each focus well, and the end result is a book shrouded in mystery and secret societies, every bit as intellectually stimulating as The Da Vinci Code, which it will almost inevitably be compared to.

The second half of the book is set at a more rapid pace and really ups the ante for our heroine. Nora and what’s left of her friends – after a devastating blow from those who seek the contraption – are in mortal peril. At this point, I’m just going to say it: TRUST NO ONE. Even the hot cousin. Especially the hot cousin. It seems cliché to say that nothing and no one is as it seems, but in this story, there is not a truer sentiment.

This book is not all dire situations and fleeing from crazy religious zealots, though. There’s a good bit of humor laced in there, with witty banter and a hilarious episode where two of the characters pretend to be engaged in order to gain access to an off-limits collection of astronomical manuscripts. There’s also the letters Nora translates from Latin that almost come to consume her in her search for answers. I very much enjoyed the correlation between Nora’s translations of Elizabeth’s letters and the situation Nora is currently faced with in the novel.

There is some romance in the book, as well, but it took a back-seat to the real problem at hand, and I appreciate that no matter how the love story was going at any particular time, it never overshadowed the rest of the story. The only thing that could have done that would have been the setting. Prague became a character in its own right. With the author pouring such beautiful and vivid descriptions into the story, it was no trouble envisioning myself as Nora, searching for answers and pieces to a puzzle she didn’t even know existed.

I’m not sure if this is slated to become a series. Though it’s over 400 pages long, I still had doubts that the author could wrap up the story before the book’s end. However, the ending was immensely satisfying and though left slightly open-ended, I would be content to leave things the way they are on the last page. Conversely, I wouldn’t be disappointed to learn that the author was continuing Nora’s story, either.

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Book-A-Likes:  The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, Illuminate by Aimee Agresti