The Opal

My original The Opal audiobook review and many others can be found at Audiobook Reviewer.

The Opal by Michael Siemsen is the second novel in the Matt Turner series. Matt Turner has a gift that allows him to read imprints from objects. All people leave an emotional and mental imprint on objects. This ability interferes with Matt’s ability to live a normal life due his inability to touch nearly all objects with his bare skin. After having completed mission where his used his ability to unearth information about an artifact in Kenya, Matt and Tuni, his coworker and girlfriend, are on vacation. But the corrupt archaeologist from that Kenya dig finds and absconds with Matt, forcing him to read a new object, an ancient opal. Placed in such a show more traumatic situation Matt tries to balance saving himself and Tuni, who is under guard, safe as well. All the while trying to find out more about this new artifact.

While I still love the premise of the book, I think that this book was less well put together compared to the first in the series. There are still two story lines: one in present time and one in the artifact’s time. The present time story is exciting and action packed. Many of the characters from the first novel are present in this sequel and the plot essentially continues where The Dig left off, which I like a lot about this series. The villain continues to be the villain, which adds a lot of continuity. Matt Turner continues to grow as a person as he comes to term with his feelings about his familial relationship, which are drawn more sharply in this novel compared to the first. Overall, I really like the present timeline. Even though some of the actions that the characters take are suspect, the end was intense and I like how the novel ends. However, the artifact timeline was not as well written as in the first novel and the integration with the present time didn’t seem as fluid either. The opal apparently changed hands relatively quickly, which made most of the characters flat and the story was difficult to follow and to become engaged with. The motivation for following the opals timeline was not as compelling either.

Chris Patton continues to do a great job with the narration. As before the characters are well voiced and voiced with variety, which is good because of the variety of nationalities represented. The production quality of the novel was good as well. I would recommend this novel to people who like action novels with a bit of history and science fiction thrown in.

Audiobook provided for review by the publisher. show less

Well - this was a really good sequel - except it felt like it was a book 2 of 3 or more... and yet the author wrapped things up (I mean - really... you could FEEL him wrapping things up )... so that it is clear the he's not interested in persuing this storyline any longer...
Some of the choices he made are unfortunate... and a tiny bit "undone"... unrealistic...
but overall the story was good - he handles crime well... but his transition between total incapacitation to functional is a bit hurried...
overall its a good story - like I said -there are just so many parts that it just feels like the author was not done with - except he just doesnt want to be in this story any longer...
and that's unfortunate