Silva provides a detailed background on his characters which I find enjoyable. However, the plot is fairly simple with few significant twists and turns. He does well with the elusive protagonist and the hero, but stops short of fully developing the plot. I was disappointed in the rapid conclusion at the end - really just a few pages to tie it wrap it up. ( )

I'm in two minds on this book. It was good, but I think Silva is suffering from Patterson-disease in that he feels compelled to rush the endings. Or there is a loose end he forgot about and all of a sudden has to fix.

If you live to seek revenge, dig a grave for twoMay be an ancient proverb but it's still so true even today.

Because most of this book took place in Israel rather than Italy, as Silva's previous books had been, it made it feel even more biblical. The Galilee, Jerusalem etc. I'd love to visit there one day but I don't know if I'd ever be brave enough. The ties to reality were interesting, the meetings with Arafat, the real life mid east conflict as opposed to the Holocaust era conflicts in the previous books I've read by him.

The foreshadowing though, as much as I thought it would mean, ended up as nothing. "This is the end," Gabriel said. "The last time. After this, it's over."

"For both of us, I'm afraid," Shamron said. "You'll come home, we'll grow old together." I thought that was going to have a lot more meaning, but oddly it was the Chiara stuff I'd overlooked that ended up having the most meaning :-/

"...Michael is the highest, but you, Gabriel, you are the mightiest. You're the one who defends Israel against its accusers. You're the angel of judgement--the prince of fire." Not so much where the title of the book came from but certainly meaningful for the Allon character.

I think the most meaningful of this was that I did not know the end. In reading the others by the author I knew there were more Gabriel Allon books to come so he'd survive but as far as I know this is the last so it has the bit of mystery to it.

A good read and now it's off to the co-worker who picked up A Death in Vienna from the break room. She's off to Okinawa in a week or so, so this book may travel far. ( )

This book moves away from the Holocaust theme of the last 3 and back to the Israel/Palestine conflict. It's interesting to see how each side describes different events, and I think the book makes a few pointed observations about the reasons the conflict continues. All-in-all, this was another great book from Silva, and I am ecstatic that his love interest from the last 2 books is gone. Never liked her! ( )

An explosion in Rome destroys the Israeli embassy, and Shamron sends Gabriel Allon after those responsible. But Allon soon discovers that his cover has been blown, putting not only his life but that of Chiara, his Italian lover, into jeopardy.

This is the context of what may be the last in the Gabriel Allon series. If so, it is an exciting and fitting end to the best international spy/thriller series in the genre. There are enough twist, turns, and unexpected revelations to satisfy the most demanding. The characters are well-developed and believable. The writing is as usual superb. The story never lets up, and you are driven to keep turning pages right up to the end.

Highly recommended. ( )

Prince of Fire is a return to the first book in the Gabriel Allon series, The Kill Artist. Gabriel is again pulled out of a peaceful retirement to once again chase down and kill Palestinian terrorists. (The three books between The Kill Artist and Prince of Fire form what Silva himself calls an accidental trilogy about the "unfinished business of the Holocaust" ("Author's Note" in A Death in Vienna, p. 397). In this book, Gabriel must track down the man who blew up the Israeli embassy in Rome and, at the same time, blew Gabriel's cover. Gabriel and his team must find the man behind the attacks before another, bigger attack takes place. In addition, the terrorists kidnap Gabriel's wife and threaten to kill her if Gabriel refuses to play their game.

In this novel, the Arab-Israeli conflict plays a central role–as you'd imagine from the above paragraph. As well as following the plot, the reader also gets to see both sides of the Arab-Israeli conflict get their say–something I really like. Too often, I feel, we get one side or the other of this story. I think you need to hear and consider both sides before you can even begin to understand what is being fought for and died for in Israel. Even then, I sometimes wonder if you have to have lived in Israel to understand. In this book, Israeli intelligence officers and soldiers get their say. Palestinian terrorists and refugees get their say. In places, you really get a sense of despair because there just doesn't seem to be a peaceful solution to the problem of Israel.

There was one weird things in this novel. Yasir Arafat is a major supporting character in this novel, which came out February 22. Arafat was alive when Silva wrote this book, but I'm sure that Prince of Fire had been sent to the publishers before or around the time Arafat died. It's strange, to read a book when you know for a fact that this person is now dead. Talk about bad timing.

I am still of two minds about Prince of Fire. On the one hand, it's a very well written, well paced novel that features of my favorite characters from contemporary literature. It brings up issues that I think need to be thought about and discussed. But on the other hand, I had a hard time with the subplot about Gabriel and Chiara's relationship. (Chiara is Gabriel's lover. To find out more, read the rest of this series.) I understand why it happened the way it did, but I'm not sure that I like it at all. I get the feeling that I'm going to have to wait until the next book to find out what's going to happen to everyone.