This is a thriller full of gritty realism. The plot opens explosively and from beginning to end is fast and furious. At times I couldn't help thinking the author must have been looking into a crystal ball: A despotic Russian president bringing the world ever-closer to Armageddon!
The fear of Armageddon is prevalent in all of Sean Heary's thrillers but he offsets the tension with splendidly witty banter between Inspector General Lorenzo Rossi of the Vatican Corpa delta Gendarmeria and Agent Cathy Doherty of the FBI. Their on/off/on again relationship makes compelling reading.
The plot is a new slant on the age old war between politics and the Church. In this case President Volkov's plan to rid Russia of Catholics and return the motherland to the orthodox faith.
A thought-provoking, deeply disturbing, look at a ruler motivated by greed and seduced by power.

I have a love of history and my newfound enjoyment of thriller/ suspense books led me to believe that unless Sean’s writing style sucked I’d probably enjoy this book. So it was just a matter of how much would I enjoy it?

Getting stuck into it I read the first few chapters and was immediately engrossed. My dad is Catholic but non-practising and so I’ve never really had much of an understanding of religion and how it played into politics so I was starting to get a different understanding of how the Vatican worked. Once I got to about 5 or 6 chapters in (there’s 72 chapters in all and they aren’t very long) where every chapter followed someone new I was starting to think this was going to be even more complex than Game of Thrones and I’d need to get a notebook to keep track of all the characters!

Luckily it calms down a little as more and more of said characters are killed off making the overall plot of the book thicker and deeper. And what better way to hook someone like me than to kill of character’s when they have JUST started to feel important? Well of course, I just HAD to keep reading! I started to resent having to go to work coz I just wanted to know what happened next! Luckily with the chapters being so short I was able to finish up at the end of a chapter most of the time, which gave me some sort of closure during the day while I was at work.

There’s so many plots happening concurrently throughout this book I always felt like I was on the back foot trying to figure out what was going on. Which I loved! I enjoy the typical romance novels quite a bit, but I also love to be challenged and I get bored if I’m constantly reading the same style of book. So this was an amazing break from the romance novels as this didn’t feel like it was a romance novel at all. Yes there were elements here and there. But they felt really well placed and as if they added to the overall story rather than being the focal piece.

My one regret about this book is how it ended. Those last 3 chapters really burst my bubble a little bit. I have been informed that there will be a second book so I’m hoping that will redeem that ending for me. It just felt like the ending didn’t really fit with the rest of the books feel. But I will have to wait until I read the second book to know for sure!

But other than the ending I honestly didn’t have any complaints! This is one I definitely plan to give to my dad for Christmas (yes I will actually pay for a physical copy for my dad!) because this style of book is well and truly up his alley and I can see him smashing it out in a couple of days.