I love Ben Hope and while I'm still disappointed with how Mariani ended "Mozart's Conspiracy", I still decided to read this hoping that it will a good one for Ben. Plot-wise and conflict, it is very engaging and Ben Hope have proven that it's really best if he works alone. He can accomplish a lot of things just by doing it himself. However, I'm again saddened with how this ended. Not because it was a tragic ending, but because I felt like Mariani just toyed with us by using such a catchy title "Doomsday Prophecy". Only to be disappointed that the so-called "prophecy" is nothing but a hoax started by a greedy Bible scholar. Despite all this, I'm now reading "Heretic Treasure" and hopes that it would have a better ending than the previous two. As the third in the Ben Hope series, we’re expecting much more from the Doomsday Prophecy – we kind of know what Hope is capable of and we know just how far reaching conspiracies can be. We want the thrills and spills, we want to wonder whether these things might actually be happening out there, and we want a little bit more besides. It’s an addiction of sorts, the preferred fix for armchair adrenaline junkies.The Doomsday Prophecy keeps us waiting a little longer for the action and the real intrigue to unfold, but then it more than makes up for leaving us dangling for so long. We’re all familiar with at least the idea of biblical prophecy, whether we’ve waded through it ourselves or not. Every time there’s trouble in the Middle East someone wheels out the predictions. Mariani takes it to a different level. Spoiler alert – Ben Hope does not fight God. At least not in the sense of fists and bullets flying.The plot, as we were hoping, is action, adventure and intrigue indeed, then cross and double cross and even a bit of triple cross in there for good measure. So we might see it coming before it happens. That’s half the joy of this series. We know perfectly well there’s no way we as average human beings could get out of these situations and we want to see how the highly skilled and possibly slightly mad Hope does it.The scheming in the Doomsday Prophecy is so multi-layered and far reaching that we can’t see for sure where it reached its zenith until Hope has the answers. We are kept guessing just who is at the top. It’s a little like playing a console game and just when you think you’ve beaten the boss, an evil laugh booms out and you fight on to meet the next one. To keep to the analogy, for every boss you kill, the danger mounts.Mariani never give us huge amounts of character detail on anyone but Hope, and yet he somehow manages to create strong impressions of each so that we can intensely like or dislike, trust or mistrust the cast. Female readers will appreciate his female characters. In this one ladies, there’s one you’ll come to dislike, but its ok girls – Ben does too. The Doomsday Prophecy gives us much more insight into Ben Hope, the man behind the operative. Again, Mariani tells us a lot in so few words that we hardly know why we know what we know. I may have been reading these books too much over a period of days, but I’m beginning to wonder if there’s not some subliminal code at work. Or perhaps it’s the simple fact that these books read like watching a movie - you see them as much as read them – so the impressions are that much stronger.Round three to you, Mr Mariani – as soon as I’ve posted this, I’m starting round four.
What do You think about The Hope Vendetta (2012)?
I absolutely love these books but am going to have to limit the amount I read in sequence
—Nhenna
It was ok, but not as good as the first two. More action and less mystery.
—Carol
