Ancient Echoes (Ancient Secrets Book 1) Kindle Edition

I'm kind of wishing I'd read the reviews before I invested any time in reading this book. I've read a few of Pence's cozy mysteries from the Angie Amalifi series and the Rebecca Mayfield series. They're cute, clever, not terribly complex, have some light romance--good for when you want a light read. That seems to be what Pence is good at, and probably what she ought to stick with.In Ancient Echoes it feels like she was trying for The Da Vinci Code but ended up with Scooby Doo (sadly, not one of the better Scooby episodes either). Complete with ghosts, shambling monsters (even zombies!), 2D caricatures of villains, bumbling heroes, an absurdly high body count, and plot holes you could drive a humvee through, this was a hard read to slog through. It isn't helped by a strong need for both copy editing and content editing. I found the vocabulary mistakes most irritating, where, for example, the author used "tenants" when she meant "tenets", and "shuddered" where she meant "shuttered". Maybe she dictates but doesn't check over the transcription? At any rate, these mistakes were distracting and annoying, and took me right out of the story as I was reading. Punctuation errors, and random strings of characters in the Kindle edition just add to the irritation. Even the protagonists are poorly fleshed out, and character development is sporadic, seemingly an afterthought when there is a lull in the action.If you enjoy Pence's cozy mysteries I would say give this one a pass. If you enjoy action stories with a mystical component there are much better examples out there, so again, I'd say give this one a pass.

This is an imaginative story and full of action and interesting twists. The only problem is that there might be a bit too much story and there are definitely too many characters - many of which deserve to have their own stories told.The basic premise is this - alchemy is not just the medieval precursor to modern science but is instead a legitimate, effective practice that can, and has produced astonishing results. A major pharmaceutical company has begun to explore this field particularly seeking a long missing book that holds the key to alchemy's secrets. Over the years others have searched for this missing book and vanished, presumably dying in the pursuit. Now a group of students, lead by a famous professor have taken up the quest, followed by an assorted group of people who are attempting to find them for a variety of reasons.This is a fun read but it would have been better if the story had been limited in scope with a smaller cast of characters. There were too many plot lines, too much jumping from group to group to get deeply invested in any character.

It was OK. Not great, and everyone was just too perfect. The good guys were perfect good guys. The bad guys were perfect bad guys. No one was in the middle, they were good or bad. The concept intrigued me, but the execution was pretty bad. One of four bad guys would show up just when the heroes would be close to fixing something. Just a little too trite for me. Not to mention, the answers to the various riddles were just way too easy for the heroes to figure out and solve, no one struggled at all. Or, how about if the bad guys knew enough of how the riddle was that they were there at every turn, why didn't they just solve it themselves and take the treasure? They might as well have, the heroes couldn't turn around without a bad guy right there. It wasn't craptastic, but it wasn't great either.

The plot of this book is a little sluggish & repetitive (-you've seen one group disappear between the pillars, you've seen 'em all-) and erupts in a couple of tacked-on, heartfelt conversations in which characters suddenly divulge their tormented pasts with just pages to go. It's a weird jumble of history, fantasy, science fiction, pathos, shoot-outs... It also seems that too many characters become interchangeable, and they are so poorly fleshed out that they evoke very little sympathy, empathy or even interest. I respect the amount of work she must have put into this book: keeping track of all the overlapping timelines, the historical elements, the Egyptian influence, the alchemy background, the terrain, etc. must have required research & organization, and I appreciate the creative story, but it just doesn't seem to hang together well. She jumps back & forth from shoot 'em up scenes to wistful philosophizing; a book needs to know what it is before it can be that thing. Proofreading would also be helpful: words are left out, there are poor sentence constructions and, most distracting, the book reveals an amateurish ignorance of appropriate verb tenses. I started out liking this, but by the time I finished, I was sick of things like "shuddered windows," errors in tense, and lengthy background tidbits that lent nothing to the plotline. It may be a good effort and the result of hard work, but that, unfortunately, doesn't make it a good book.

This book was very disappointing, started out with several interesting story lines but deteriorated into a mess of the good guys chasing the bad guys, lots of violence , basically organized chaos, it was a tough slog to get to the end, I don't recommend this book

This is a great story that keeps you turning pages long after bedtime. The characters are well described as is the art of alchemy.

I really enjoyed this book couldn't put it down

Very interesting with plenty of action can not wait to start on the next book when I download it ok

Excellent read, thoroughly enjoyed this book, new author for me...will be checking out other books by Joanne...DMH

A captivating read which keeps you enthralled and entertained. I enjoyed the pace of story-telling and the ideas contained within. Anyone who likes adventure and mystery should enjoy this book.