Hello everyone!
Tonight's blog post is a bit of a return to my roots, in a sense, because this particular book series was what got me "re-hooked" or, hooked again, on REALLY reading, seriously and furiously.
I can still remember randomly picking up the first one at a store, thinking it was going to be some la-la land thing, and ending up devouring it because of how vividly and realistically it was written.
Then I hunted down the rest of the then-translated books (I think the first five or six were translated into my language) in my local library and gobbled those, too.
After finding out that the author had written more, I got them for my e-reader in English, and am now pretty much almost caught up with the series, but I figured, before I dive into the last few, I'd start it all from the beginning. And every first step is always followed by a second one, so here we are with that tonight!
Jack Howard dives again, and honestly? David Gibbins knows what he's doing with these.
Crusader Gold is up next.
Having met Jack and Kostas in Atlantis, we now rejoin the unlikely comrades at the Golden Horn, where he's hunting down the remnants of the massive chain that was used to block the gulf off from any incoming (or outgoing) ships.
Think Blackwater Bay episode back in Game of Thrones, savvy?
They in fact dredge up a piece of it, with ancient timber still attached, when Maurice Hiebermeyer - you know, the dude initially responsible for finding a papyrus with 'Atlantis' written on it in book one - brings some other exciting news, but, well, he gets derailed.
Something else ALWAYS seems to pull Jack away from Maurice and his discoveries, but don't worry, we'll get back to him by the end of this book! And in the meantime, while Jack's hopping on the next flight outta there, he leaves him in charge of the Golden Horn dig.
And by the way, that timber from the chain? Way older than anyone thought, in fact, Viking age kind of old.
But the reason why Jack gets derailed is because an old acquaintance of his, Maria, and her student Jeremy (remember Jeremy, he'll be important later) unearthed something almost Biblical in proportions.
The original Mappa Mundi, which just so happens to be DIFFERENT from the one the world knows.
As in, there's Vinland on there, the ancient name for North America, and a tiny little symbol ... of the Jewish Menorah.
Little backstory: Judea, as a kingdom, was conquered by the Roman Empire, and after a triumphant roll through the capitol, all the treasure - the Menorah included - was locked away, never to see the light ever again, because even the emperor of that time recognized what a divisive and potentially deadly symbol that was.
But with the symbol on the map, it means the Menorah had resurfaced at some point AFTER the empire, and Jack gets a rather crazy idea while diving in an iceberg:
what if, before the WESTERN empire fell, it was moved to Constantinople?
And also, what if, it was stolen from the treasury there?
Because, get this: everything's connected. even the crazy iceberg dive that only Jack and Kostas could undertake (and survive, against all odds, even as the thing partly rolls and yeets them out ...).
There's an ancient fellowship that was dedicated to preserving and protecting the truth, as well as keeping alive a certain myth that passed into the west - towards mystical Vinland - a warrior king named Harald Hardrada.
Or, alternately, the dude who supposedly died in 1066, after which time William the Conqueror took over England.
But what if the man DIDN'T die?
What if he used to be a fabled Varangian guard from Constantinople, who stole the Menorah (also a princess, but who's counting at this point) and then he and his group of hardened warriors considered it their good-luck charm? And he thought himself the rightful ruler of England, but with his defeat, decided to quietly slip away into the unknown?
And yet a legend still exists, of the once true king, who'll return to take up the mantle once more.
If you're hearing King Arthur, well, there's a kernel in there, as well.
But Jack & Co deduce Harald sailed WEST, towards Vinland, which he had already discovered earlier, and they took the Menorah with them.
At this point it's basically a treasure hunt, but also a race against time:
the original fellowship, the one tasked to preserving the myth and keeping alive the hope that the king will return? Weeeeeelll there's always a few bad apples, and those just always wanted the fabled gold.
And lo and behold, just as the good guys still have descendants today, so do the bad ones. Including but not limited to guys who worked with the SS during World War II ... when the whole 'pure race' thing was at its height, lots of money was funneled into research, and of course somebody wanted the Menorah back then as well.
The greatest symbol of the Jews, in Nazi hands? CAN YOU EVEN IMAGINE?
Horror show, front and centre, but thank GOD nobody found it then, except now they're hot on the tail of Jack and his buddies, who explore in America for a bit until disaster strikes:
their compatriot up in Europe is dead, flayed open via the blood eagle ritual, and Maria's missing.
They get a photograph and a demand for Jack and Kostas to come along nicely, with their diving equipment, and it looks like it's about to be game over, because what happened is that one of the former SS thugs escaped to South America, to the Yucatan, where it's easy to get lost, bribe the local authorities, and just keep doing illegal stuff. And get this: he's hunting the Menorah, too, and he's been on Jack's trail for a bit.
Jack, who's been following after Hardrada, and who discovered the man's warrior buddy preserved in the iceberg after his funeral (died, presumably, of old wounds), deduced that the Vikings reached Vinland, then continued on, and finally found themselves in the Caribbean, of all places. Hell on Earth for people like them, seasoned mariners that they were even with depleted reserves and numbers, they ended up in a fierce battle with the natives of the land.
And even as Jack and Costas dive to get Maria out of there, they in fact find the Viking final stand, and Hardrada while they're at it, and recognize this was the end of the road for most: those who didn't get sacrificed to the bloody gods of the peninsula ended as slaves (the skeleton of which they found further up, closer to making his way home).
However, there's no Menorah, which is going to be a problem, but of course Jack usually has a plan, so he and Costas end up outsmarting their captor, taking HIM into custody, and then Jack follows after his crazy ass son who'd taken Maria down into the cenote tunnels to dive. After one final battle in the place where all battles seem to end, Jack prevails, and the other is ... well, sucked into oblivion is a good way of putting it, what with the waters being as high as they are.
The last kick of all is when Maria reveals that the thug who captured her and who caused them all so much pain was a boy during the Nazi regime, and his father would routinely let him "practice" killing Jews. One of them was her mother, but he didn't do a good job because she survived, with the bullet lodged in her skull.
Maria gets the honour of last shot, and afterwards, when they make sure the place will be properly excavated and money diverted there to help the research, the group is recovering on board Jack's ship as he pulls together the final clues:
what, in fact, happened to the Menorah?
It went from Judea to Rome, and then to Constantinople. From there, Harald took it with him, up to Greenland, and then across to Vinland, and it fell into the hands of the Maya civilization, which eventually fell to European invaders in the 17th century. But Maya and gold being what they were, the Menorah probably got smuggled out when the last of them fled, but it would be impractical to cart the massive candlestick holder around ... so Jack theorizes they melted it down into gold coins.
Said gold coins were actually given to the Spanish to try and stave off the invasion, and thus returned to Europe with them ... to Europe, and the banking system, held by none other than the Jews.
So in the end, the Menorah possibly DID return to its people - just not in its original form.
And with that, Jack says goodbye to the Vikings - also, notably, his ancestors as he has Viking blood himself - and chucks the double-headed battle-axe he took from the iceberg into the sea, where all calculations predict the iceberg, and it's frozen inhabitant, will eventually meet its end.
There, they will wait, axe and owner, for the call of their brother and king, to fight the giants at the end of days in a final showdown.
If you don't end up partly believing these theories I really don't know what to tell you! Gibbins writes so well and so believably that you end up fully trusting pretty much everything he says, because extensive research goes into every one of his works. If you like discovering history but also don't want to get too bogged down, these may be the books for you, specifically this one with its emphasis on the Vikings.
May we all wait for the call of the one true king.
Hann til Ragnaroks!
xx
*image not mine
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