The Book of Fate

Wes Holloway was once an ambitious aide to the President of the United States. When an assassin's bullet permanently disfigures Wes and kills one of the President's closest friends Boyle, Wes is wracked with guilt. But when Boyle turns up, seemingly unscathed, eight years later, Wes is determined to uncover what really happened.

I loved the fact that Wes was not one of your typical strong, cocky heroes. In fact, he's incredibly emotionally vulnerable after the incident, and his mental health is largely supported by his devotion to the former President. I loved watching him wrestle with the idea that his 'rock' could be involved in this kind of plot. Wes' vulnerability both increases the stakes and sets this apart from many thrillers. As show more for the Masonic premise...it's not that I needed a far-fetched conspiracy involving the Freemasons - but when that sort of thing features so prominently on the cover & jacket copy... well, WHERE were my Freemasons?

More at my blog. show less

This was a hot mess. Meltzer tries to write a Dan Brown-like book and falls very, very short. He tries to weave the Masons, Jefferson, etc. into some odd plot for characters to game the system at the highest levels but fails miserably. Most of the book follows a former White House aid, Wes, who's disfigured when someone tries to assonate the president. Years later, Wes sees a colleague who he thought died during the attempt. Hundreds of pages are spent with Wes as he tries to figure out what's going on. The characters, plot, pacing, etc. is all overblown and meandering.

[The Book of Fate] by Brad Meltzer
4★'s

From the Book:
"Six minutes from now, one of us would be dead. None of us knew it was coming."

So says Wes Holloway, a young presidential aide, about the day he put Ron Boyle, the chief executive's oldest friend, into the president's limousine. By the trip's end, a crazed assassin would permanently disfigure Wes and kill Boyle. Now, eight years later, Boyle has been spotted alive. Trying to figure out what really happened takes Wes back into disturbing secrets buried in Freemason history, a decade-old presidential crossword puzzle, and a two-hundred-year-old code invented by Thomas Jefferson that conceals secrets worth dying for.

My Thoughts:

I love d the story line and will say that I had given the show more book a 4.5 star rating with the expectation of a perfect 5...until... It was an exciting action at every turn story with characters that you could love and trust in one chapter and hate and distrust before the next page. Everyone could have been the good guy and everyone could have been the bad guy. So what happened? The ending that went on and on and on and then the epilogue that was about ten minutes longer than it needed to be. Just didn't have the punch that the first 114 chapters had, not to mention that we never really found out what the tie in was with the Masons. That being said...it was an enjoyable book. I loved Brad Meltzer's television series, "History Decoded"... so I will certainly read another of his future books. show less

I beg to differ with some of the people on Amazon who totally panned this book. I have a feeling that they were looking for another DaVinci Code type story which they're not going to find here. Okay...I can understand why this might be because of the cover, with its tantalizing promise of a Masonic conspiracy, because, frankly, that's what I thought I was getting as well. I love that kind of stuff...you know, the ancient secrets of a brotherhood type novel. But it was not to be. However, I don't think that people should diss the novel because it wasn't what was promised by cover art. This is a political thriller, through and through. If you enjoy a good political thriller with a couple of puzzles to solve along the way, you will enjoy show more this one. Do NOT be put off by the reviews. It was fun. Not great literature, not a book destined to stay on the bestseller lists forever, but just fun, intriguing and an all-in-all decent read.

So here's a brief look, with no spoilers:
As the story opens, the country is under the leadership of president Leland Manning. His aide, Wes Holloway, is about to accompany him and his entourage to the Daytona Beach speedway, where the president is going to make a surprise visit, with his limo driving right up onto the tracks. Bad route choice. As the group leaves the car, there is an assassination attempt on the president, but it is Wes and another man, Boyle, who take the hits. Wes is badly wounded in the face and Boyle dies.

Eight years later, while now former president Manning is in Malaysia, Wes goes to the president's suite and interrupts what he thinks is a burglary. He gets a look at the intruder and realizes it's someone who it can't possibly be. This one episode leads Wes and his closest friends, along with a gossip columnist for a Palm Beach newspaper, to begin an investigation that will uncover secrets that a lot of people don't want to be revealed.

It's fun, fast-paced and truly a page turner. Try it, and don't listen to the detractors. show less

Nutshell--Good, engaging, but not even as complex as a Castle episode/mystery

While a good page-turner, I figured out the alleged surprise identity of a hidden "person behind it all" about a third of the way into the book. It didn't diminish some of the suspense or other side-mysteries, but it felt a bit going-through-the-numbers to me.

I decided to read this because I wondered why Brad Meltzer was getting such big reviews and sales; his Identity Crisis for DC Comics was my first exposure to him and I still haven't forgiven him for his ruination of Ralph & Sue Dibny (not to mention the cascading domino-theory problem from his retconned ideas in said mini-series).

Will I read more Meltzer? Sure, if the topic at hand is interesting to me, show more but I won't be expecting a mystery that keeps me guessing. He's more a thriller writer than mystery I suppose, but when all you know is the author's marketing & book covers, that's how they seem at first blush to this reader. show less

To be honest, this was the best book I ever picked from a charity shop. It definitely brought me out of my reading slump despite taking half a year to read (I’m slow). However taking it on a trip definitely brought me back to it.

I loved the plot and didn’t expect the third member of The Three to be who it was. Wes overall was someone I fell in love with. Boyle on the other hand confused me with the random pieces of info thrown into the story.

Would defo recommend this to anyone who loves a mystery/Political type book.

http://lampbane.livejournal.com/590076.html

"The back cover copy of Book of Fate talks about the Masons, a '200-year-old code devised by Thomas Jefferson' and 'a decade-old crossword puzzle that conceals secrets worth dying for.'

Okay, the only part the Masons play in the book is that the crazed assassin character is obsessed with the idea that the Masons are behind everything. They aren't. The Jefferson code doesn't come into play until there's only 100 pages to go (of the 500 pages of novel) and they don't even bother fully explaining/decoding it. As for the crossword puzzle, sure it conceals secrets, but secrets worth dying for? I think that's a bit of promotional exaggeration. The crossword puzzle is a MacGuffin, like almost show more everything else in the book. I could summarize the actual plot in the book in about three or four sentences. Instead we endure 500 pages of rising and falling action, points where it feels like they're about to ascend to the climax but then you realize there's still 300 pages to go.

Despite that, I found the book passable. The dialogue is snappy and Meltzer does a good job of conveying action, and he really did his research. What really killed it for me though, was the main character. Wes Holloway, presidential aide, was injured and scarred during a failed assassination attempt on the president, and eight years later, all he does is whine whine whine about how no one will hire him and no one will love him and everyone just stares at his horribly scarred face. Look, anyone who watched a colleague bleed out on the pavement and then had their face torn up by a stray bullet is entitled to their share of PTSD. It's understandable to have nightmares and be paranoid for years after something like that. But the "oh woes me" attitude is pretty ridiculous, because he pretty much blames the incident for everything that's gone wrong in his life... things that I'm not sure would go wrong. He's a former presidential aide and he can't get a new job? Really. Girls are repulsed by the sight of his horrible facial deformity? Sigh. People won't stop staring? Well duh, that's what they're biologically programmed to do, it doesn't make them bad people. By the end of the book things start to turn around for him, which I guess shows it was all in his head, but you have to wonder if he deserved the White House job in the first place, since it feels like he wasn't made of stern stuff to begin with." show less