{"id":1136,"date":"2018-06-07T15:00:14","date_gmt":"2018-06-07T21:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=1136"},"modified":"2018-05-20T17:04:28","modified_gmt":"2018-05-20T23:04:28","slug":"book-the-atlantis-stone-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2018\/06\/07\/book-the-atlantis-stone-2013\/","title":{"rendered":"BOOK: The Atlantis Stone (2013)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><u><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/images.gr-assets.com\/books\/1498449739l\/35513972.jpg\" alt=\"The Atlantis Stone\" width=\"316\" height=\"475\" \/>The Atlantis Stone<br \/>\n<\/u><\/strong>Year: 2013<br \/>\nAuthor: Nick Thacker<br \/>\nLength: 480 pages<\/p>\n<p>Albert Einstein is often attributed to the quote, \u201cThe secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.\u201d In that case,\u00a0<em>The Atlantis Stone<\/em>, is not creative, as all its sources are plainly on display, jumping from imitations of Dan Brown to imitations of\u00a0<em>National Treasure<\/em>, and everything in-between. I wouldn\u2019t mind the obvious homage to better stories if the plot was\u00a0any good.\u00a0<em>The Atlantis Stone<\/em>\u00a0is not a good story, though. The main reason for this seems to be the characters themselves, but there\u2019s plenty of plot holes to blame as well.<\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s start with the characters: there are too many of them, and many are entirely unnecessary. The token female in the entire group seems tagged on for the mere ability to provide a few moments of exposition, as well as give the lecherous males something to long for. Her uncle is completely unnecessary, as his research doesn\u2019t require him to actually be at these famous monuments to explain how the Golden Ratio is a thing. There were plenty of other characters who I knew only by name tags but honestly couldn\u2019t remember who they were or why I should care.<\/p>\n<p>As for the plot, it\u2019s pretty obvious early on where it\u2019s going, even if none of the specifics are known. What I don\u2019t get is how these people traveled all over the world and weren\u2019t just knock-out tired from the sudden jet lag. Furthermore, there\u2019s this \u201ctimer\u201d that\u2019s counting down to an apocalypse event, but why is it centered on that time zone, and not the time zone of any of the other significant ancient sites? Not that any of it matters, because there\u2019s so much disorienting action that there isn\u2019t any time for character or plot development.<\/p>\n<p>An uninspired mish-mash of more successful ideas, I give\u00a0<em>The Atlantis Stone<\/em>\u00a01.5 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n<h2><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/>\u00a01\/2<\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Atlantis Stone Year: 2013 Author: Nick Thacker Length: 480 pages Albert Einstein is often attributed to the quote, \u201cThe secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.\u201d In that case,\u00a0The Atlantis Stone, is not creative, as all its sources are plainly on display, jumping from imitations of Dan Brown to imitations of\u00a0National [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[236,54],"tags":[121,55,1323,638,856,718,1249,8,1322,1324],"class_list":["post-1136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1-5-stars","category-book","tag-121","tag-book","tag-confusing","tag-dan-brown","tag-derivative","tag-national-treasure","tag-nick-thacker","tag-review","tag-the-atlantis-stone","tag-too-many-characters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1136"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1136\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1139,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1136\/revisions\/1139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}