Breaking Ground: The Horeb Anomaly

Robert J. Cornell
Tate Publishing (2011)
ISBN 9781617394317
Reviewed by Marty Shaw for Reader Views (2/11)


I was worried when I first picked up “Breaking Ground: The Horeb Anomaly.” Judging from the synopsis, I figured it would either be like “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” which I thought was great, or “The DaVinci Code,” which made a decent movie but the novel was just a little too slow for me. Imagine my surprise when I discovered a perfect blending of the two. The plot revolves around two main characters – Holly and Jack. Holly is the brain who gets called out of the quiet and calm of the museum archives to solve an ancient puzzle capable of unlocking the mysteries of the past. Jack is the brawn, called out of semi-retirement to make use of his military training because there’s a group known as the Brotherhood that doesn’t want those secrets revealed… and they don’t care whom they have to kill in order to keep those mysteries buried.

I really enjoyed the riddles and puzzles that had to be solved by Holly and her team as they race to uncover one of the biggest finds in the history of the world. All the puzzle pieces are there, and the solutions are impressive in their simplicity when the answers are finally revealed. While there is plenty of time spent in a lab, pouring over ancient texts, the plot continues on at a steady pace and I never found myself getting bored.

As steady as the plot is during the research phase, the action picks up speed as the team moves out into the field. In his efforts to keep the group safe, Jack recruits Will and Luke, two military buddies, to help add to the firepower when things get rough. Will really didn’t seem to do much for me, almost reminding me of one of those infamous ‘red shirts’ on Star Trek whose sole purpose is to die. He’s a nice guy who does his job and gets along with everybody, but that’s about it. Luke, with his sarcastic humor and ‘blow everything up’ attitude was a much more entertaining supporting character. The face of the Brotherhood in this adventure, Al-Fatima, is a cold and calculating man who will stop at nothing to preserve history as it’s recorded. While his actions are evil, he himself seems to just be a guy doing his job. To him, it’s not personal but you have to die anyway if you get in his way.

I felt the conclusion of the story was a bit rushed. While Holly has always done a great job of solving the riddles, it was understandable when she came up with a solution because all the pieces were there, just waiting to be assembled. At the end, Holly seems to gain some knowledge that’s of huge importance but there’s no clear line between point ‘A’ and point ‘B’- she just simply knows something all of a sudden. While it’s not a big bump in the story, I was surprised by it because of the methodical and realistic way the previous answers were discovered.

The story of  “Breaking Ground: The Horeb Anomaly” is too big to be contained within the covers of one book so Cornell will be coming out with Book Two sometime in the future. Jack and Holly are two likable characters taking part in an interesting mission so I’ll be re-joining them at that time to see where the mysteries take them.

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