The Amber Room is a much like the kind of tale I write – an international thriller with an everyman protagonist (in this case, an everyman and everywoman) who gets by with whatever native intelligence and wits he/she brings to the party. It was Steve Berry’s first published novel, one of three he wrote before he drifted into Dan Brown territory with his Cotton Malone series, and as such it still has some mooring in the real world.The Amber Room is the near-legendary Czarist treasure stolen by the Nazis from the Soviet Union during WWII. The amber-encrusted wall panels disappeared at the end of the war, leaving behind a number of conflicting theories regarding their fate. This much is true. Where Berry comes in: two wealthy art collectors – who steal stolen artworks for their own uses – now compete with each other to find the now-priceless panels. Their henchpeople – one man, one woman, both of course beautiful, sexy, adept sociopaths – canvass the U.S. and Europe for clues to the room’s location.Enter our protagonists: Paul and Rachel Cutler, he a lawyer, she a judge. Rachel’s elderly father happens to be one of the few people alive who has a handle on the Amber Room’s final stop. When he ends up suddenly dead, Rachel decides to investigate, and Paul decides to follow to keep her out of trouble. That they run afoul of those two beautiful, sexy, adept, sociopathic henchpeople and become deeply enmeshed in the hunt for the Amber Room should come as no shock to you.The big surprise here isn’t in the plot – if you’ve read enough of these, you’ll have a pretty good idea where things are going before they get there – but in what good company the Cutlers are. They act and think like normal (albeit highly educated) people. Divorced but not hateful, they have lingering feelings for each other, and both are devoted to their children. At one time or another, one or the other is quite ready to stop and go home; I can’t recall Dan Brown’s Robert Langdon ever deciding to say “to hell with it” when the Forces of Darkness gather around him. The Cutlers make mistakes and trust the wrong people and learn from their missteps. And, like real people, they sometimes do things they haven’t thought through and for which they don’t have clear motives. In a genre in which both protagonists and villains always seem to know everything and know how to do everything, it’s enormously refreshing to tag along with characters who don’t make you feel hopelessly ignorant and incompetent.The henchpeople – Knoll (he) and Danzer (she) – are largely interchangeable, amoral in the usual ways, with roughly similar tastes and proclivities (why is it that in thrillers, the more evil you are, the more and better the sex that you have?). But at least they have reasons for being the way they are, and they’re merely sociopaths and not psychotics. Their masters are also largely interchangeable, wealthy beyond bounds and living in medieval Central European castles bedecked with their ill-gotten loot. The sameness of the antagonists is one of the key failings of this book. The historical downloads are usually motivated and usually end before they get irritating, although characters sometimes repeat themselves. The settings are well-drawn and easily visualized and will look swell in the inevitable Showtime or Starz original movie.The Amber Room is a fine way to spend a few hours if you’re into search-for-treasure thrillers. It’s like Dan Brown lite, without the attached reading list and with better writing. The protagonists prove that not every thriller hero has to be ex-Special Forces or World’s Foremost Expert in anything, and it’s a nice change to not have the fate of the known universe hanging in the balance. A good time was had by all.
The Amber Room is an awful book. Just awful. I forced myself to slog my way through to the end, and I was bored and glass-eyed through the whole process. The book is a far cry from the few others of Steve Berry's books I've read, which makes me wonder how he managed to get this one published first.To sum up, The Amber Room is an overly complicated, arrogant tale about a search for just as the title says: the long-lost Amber Room once held in Russia's Catherine Palace. It was a marvelous treasure in Russia, and even Europeans loved it. But (still true story here), it was lost during World War II when Germans and Russians were at odds with each other, and their attempts to save, smuggle and destroy the room's amber panels were for naught. So the book begins with this narrative, about a mysterious history of the room, and it brings in two shallow ex-lovers (who, spoiler alert, find love again, shockingly) to find it all over again.Paul and Rachel Cutler have absolutely no reason to be seeking the Amber Room. They only do on a wild hunch, but then for some reason they can't let go. The book feels like Berry tried impossibly hard to make a relevant connection from art history and adventure buffs like most of the characters, to a humdrum regular working class couple. I kept reading and reading, expecting that moment when my mind was going to be blown about why Paul and Rachel were involved, and why their pursuers were chasing after them so ardently. Nothing; it never came. I read on with disinterest at that point, just wanting to make it to the end. Even the final climactic scene was over so quickly that I was let down — all that reading, for that?All of Steve Berry's books are fast-paced and action-packed, which is fine for people who are into that sort of thing. But that's about it. I didn't connect with the characters, I didn't know what was happening (unless it was explicitly spelled out in the book like it often was) and I felt confused and annoyed how characters who knew everything suddenly came in and out of the narrative. Overall, a boring read and one I won't be holding onto.
What do You think about The Amber Room (2015)?
"Sexy, illuminating, and confident. THE AMBER ROOM is my kind of thriller--a globe-trotting treasure hunt packed with exotic locales, sumptuous art, and ruthless villains. Steve Berry writes with the self-assured style of a veteran." --DAN BROWN, Author of The Da Vinci CodeForged of the exquisite gem, the Amber Room is one of the greatest treasures ever made by man--and the subject of one of history’s most intriguing mysteries. German troops invading the Soviet Union seized the Room in 1941. When the Allies bombed, the Room was hidden, and it has never been seen since. But now, the hunt has begun once more.Atlanta judge Rachel Cutler loves her job and her kids, and remains civil to her ex-husband, Paul. But everything changes when her father dies under mysterious circumstances, leaving behind clues to a secret about something called the Amber Room. Desperate for the truth, Rachel takes off for Germany with Paul close behind. Before long, they’re in over their heads. Locked into a treacherous game with professional killers, Rachel and Paul find themselves on a collision course with the forces of greed, power, and history itself.
—JoAnne Pulcino
Oh Amber Room, how did I hate thee? Let me count the ways...- Every German says "und" (instead of "and") even as they're speaking English.- Women say "Damn you" to the man they're about to sleep with.-"Damn" used in every other sentence: "The trail was easy to follow. Too damn easy."-How much needless, random sex do you need in a book?-Every cliche possible is used - my favorite: The greedy American treasure hunter is named McCoy and calls women "little lady". ARE YOU KIDDING ME????-Crazy long paragraphs of description of the history behind the Amber Room - any competent writer would have been able to put that information in the action without resorting to pages of exposition. Or even in shorter exposition!-The female protagonist is "feisty", and her Russian, widowed father lovingly says that "she's just like her mother". Oh wow, another cliche! For the record, the character wasn't feisty - she was just bitchy.-I listened to the audio-version of this, and the reader made every German sound exactly the same, and exactly like the gay German alias on the movie The Saint.Unbelievably bad. I got to the last disc of the 13 disc set and couldn't do anymore, even though I was so close to the end. Maybe it turned brilliant in that last disc?? I just didn't care. I wanted to like it because I thought the premise seemed so interesting, but it was horrible. Every character makes the stupidest decisions you can possibly imagine, and there is scarcely a character to even like, let alone care about. I suppose, to be fair, I should admit that I hate almost all thrillers, but there are intelligent thrillers of this type out there (The Eight, The Book of Q), so there's just no excuse for using such potentially good material and turning it into something so bad. It's officially in my list of the worst books I've ever read.To add to my annoyance, I realized after looking at some reviews on Amazon that the reader of the audiobook was also pronouncing the German names incorrectly. Ugh!!!
—Ann
I really enjoy this kind of book! A treasure hunting is always something exciting! Specially when the treasure is something real and misterious like The Amber room. Is not the first time I hear about The Amber Room, after starting this book I couldn't help but to look for some update information. The truth is, this Room had never being found, to the point that it had to be recrated based in photographs. Is amazing how something so big can just vanish. As the story goes, you can almost guess where the Room is, or with whom, or maybe not. Still the same, is just fun to read this cat-hunting-mice kind of adventure. I wonder if there is a movie base on this book. I think it will be something interesting to watch.Some people compares Steve Berry to Dan Brown.But like someone else said, he is so much better!!
—Roxana
