Thrillers aren’t really my genre, but “something about games and secret libraries” is clearly the sort of thing I should like, so it seemed worth a try. It turned out to be good to read on trains, with a sort of idle sense of slow progression running through it. A few years on from publication, the “game” parts seem predictably off-target, despite there being few details about the actual mechanics, but it’s all readable enough.

I do want to start keeping track of phone conversations people have in fiction to show the reader how good they are at something, though – there’s a hilarious couple of paragraphs early on in this one when the hero is talking about French insurance in order to show what a confident financial whiz he is.

Edward Wonzy is on the first vacation he’s taken since he could remember. Normally a high profile stock broker, Edward is taking two weeks off to get his affairs in order before he leaves for a similar job in London. His firm asks him to drop by on a client to do a favor, however.

It turns out the favor has been requested by the Duke and Duchess of Bowmry, England. They want him to catalog their huge collection of books and keep an eye out for one book in particular. Edward was sure this was some sort of mistake as the task is beneath him. He thinks about excusing his way out of it, but as each day passes, he takes comfort in the chore.

He tries to find out more about this book, this codex he is looking for. In his research he comes across Margaret Napier who just so happens to be an expert on the author: Gervase of Langford. Margaret is unemotional and from what I can tell, barely human. She’s robotic in almost every way. She is convinced the codex is a fake.

Meanwhile, Edward gets sucked into a computer game called MOMUS which has striking similarities to his quest for the codex.

The first half of this book had me turning pages. It was easy to read and interesting enough, but I suppose I was so eager to get to the next page because I was waiting for something to HAPPEN. Anything at all. No one actually does anything noteworthy in this book at all. In fact, no one would even break a sweat if it weren’t for the fact that it was the middle of summer.

Most of the book is spent in libraries or in front of a computer screen, describing a game. None of the characters are particularly interesting. The ending came out of left field and had a dreamlike quality to it.

I didn’t hate the book, but I felt the storyline and characters were beyond weak.