Book reviews

What if the whole world is a chessboard, the people are pieces on it – pawns, knights, kings and queens – and several centuries of history is the greatest chess battle ever?

…France, 1790. The Montglane Abbey. The walls of the abbey conceal the ancient secret knowledge. The key to this knowledge is the gold chess set decorated with jewels. The chess pieces are parts of the formula which, once revealed, gives its owner the unlimited power to rule the world. There is a hunt for the set, and always a danger that the chess will be found by those who will obtain the formula and make it a weapon which will serve the Evil. The sisters of the Abbey decide to prevent that by scattering the pieces around the world. One of the sisters, a young novice called Mireil de Remy takes several pieces and starts a long journey to fulfil her mission in the Game.

200 years later, Catherine Velis, a painter and a computer expert working for a great company, meets a mysterious fortune-teller who reads her palm. The fortune-teller gives Catherine a coded message and warns her of some great danger. After that, strange things begin to happen around Catherine, her life is under threat, and she realises that she has become a pawn in somebody's great game. Only a pawn, but according to chess rules a pawn may become a queen under certain circumstances…

Centuries pass, and the Game goes on and on throughout space and time, white against black, Good against Evil.

The Eight is a peculiar novel. It combines mystical, philosophical, historical and detective themes. The plot is very rich and profound. The author seems to rewrite the large part of history; she presents her own version of certain historical events giving new reasons for them and explaining them from the point of view of the rules established by the Game. And who knows, maybe she is not so far from the truth?

Many people who felt rather sceptical about this novel turned out to be greatly surprised by themselves, because they found themselves unable to put this book aside after they began reading it. The Eight, no doubt, stands apart from numerous novels of the same kind, the number of which after the publication of The Da Vinci Code began to increase in geometric progression.

The Eight was Katherine Neville's first experience in literature and it immediately brought her success and a worldwide acknowledgement among readers. Highly recommended.