From the TBR Pile: Review and GIVEAWAY: The Paradise Prophecy

published by: Dutton Publishing

publish date: July 21, 2011

The Myth: When God cast the archangel Satan into Hell, ending the War in Heaven, peace prevailed on Earth. Until the fallen angels took revenge in the Garden of Eden. Ever since, mankind has been in a struggle between good and evil, paradise and apocalypse: the fall of Rome, The Crusades, World Wars, nuclear proliferation, the Middle East Crisis... The War in Heaven never really ended-it just changed venues. For millennia, God's angels have been fighting Satan's demons on Earth, all in hopes of bringing about Satan's greatest ambition, the Apocalypse.

The Reality: Satan has never been closer to his goal than right now.

Agent Bernadette Callahan is a talented investigator at a shadowy government organization known only as Section, on the trail of a serial killer with nearly supernatural abilities. Sebastian "Batty" LaLaurie is a religious historian who knows far too much about the other side- and that hard-earned knowledge is exactly what Callahan needs. This unlikely duo pair up for a race across the globe, decoding clues left in ancient texts from the Bible to Paradise Lost and beyond. In the process they stumble upon a vast conspiracy-one beyond the scope of mankind's darkest imagination.

If you're a fan of Dan Brown, James Rollins, or even Clive Cussler, I think you'd like this book. It's a action/adventure/thriller with historical and religious elements. Normally, I fly through books, but this one I couldn't. I found that it was somewhat "heavy reading". I had to go back and reread some sections to figure out what was going on. That was a little frustrating for me, but it was worth it because it was a really excellent story.

I really liked all this historical references throughout the book. I haven't read Paradise Lost by John Milton so I don't know if everything in the book was true or not, but if it was it was pretty interesting. I had never heard of the Codex Gigas before, but I looked it up and it's fascinating. I'm going to have to learn more about it.

As a reader from south Louisiana I was pleased to see that Sebastian LaLaurie was from Louisiana. I also couldn't help but notice his last name. If you're familiar with New Orleans history, or haunted houses you might have heard of the LaLaurie Mansion. If you aren't, Marie LaLaurie was a horrible woman and there's all kinds of stories about her mistreatment of slaves. I wondered if that historical nugget played in to this book about Satan.

I have ONE book to give away. It's open to the US and Canada. Please leave a comment on this post with a valid email address. This giveaway will be open until August 7th.