The Secret of Heaven

The Secret of Heaven (Aiden Leonardo #1) by Felix Alexander
Review by Mario J. Otero

Edition read
Book title:	The Secret of Heaven
Author:	Felix Alexander
Language:	English
Format:	.MOBI (for Kindle)
ISBN:	1530752469
Publisher:	ForeverPoetic
Date published:	2014
N° of pages:	4257 Kindle "locations" (~300 pages)

The Secret of Heaven is a very enjoyable thriller, plenty of ingredients that make of it a very interesting reading.

With very well defined characters, the book involves mystery and suspense and betrayal, while takes the reader through the realms of religion and mythology, science and history, politics and crime, during the chase for a religious/mythical article with the involvement of mysterious characters, the Chicago Police Dept., the FBI and even some obscure organization.

With two and even three threads of development that forcibly have to meet, the ingredients are spiced all along with the taste of modernity by explicit mentions to technological gadgets like computers, communications, CCTV, cell phones and apps, cars, autonomous cars, all of this with mentions to makes and models.

Characters come from multiple nationalities and have multiple ethnic origins, creating a multicultural cast; some of them are scholars in biblical studies, world history, archaeology, and they give the quota of credibility and mystery with their knowledge. Credibility is increased by the mention of actual institutions and places where the action occurs: the University of Chicago, the University of Illinois, the Sheraton of Kuwait City and even a monastery close to Mount Sinai. This way it is hard to determine where the reality ends and the fiction starts, which is a very interesting effect in the story, à la Dan Brown (The Da Vinci Code) or Arturo Pérez-Reverte (El Club Dumas).

The style is very straightforward. After a while, the reader learns that texts in italics are what the characters think for themselves rather than what they speak aloud, a technique that seemed interesting to me. The book is well documented in religious matters, scriptures, gospels and orders like Rosicrucians, which is then mixed with the fictional part.

Several characters are important in the plot and the development. Being the first volume of the "Aiden Leonardo Series", one would think this should be easily the main character, but it didn't seem to me strong enough to stand out over, for example, prof. Nagi. Ending somewhat rapidly, these two situations are probably made on purpose to link with the subsequent volume.

As I said in the beginning, a very enjoyable book to read; let's wait for the following installments for better knowing our main character, prof. Aiden Leonardo.

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My copy of the book was provided free of charge by the author, via @booktasters, in exchange for an honest review. An excerpt of this review is published in my Goodreads page.

MJOD, Bogotá, May 2016