The Book of Blood and Shadow

© Robin Wasserman

Module 9: The Book of Blood and Shadow by Robin Wasserman

Summary

Nora’s seemingly normal life is rocked one day by the brutal murder of her best friend Chris – and supposedly at the hands of Chris’ roommate, and her boyfriend, Max. Nora grew up translating Latin as a hobby with her father, a Latin professor. Now doing it as an intern for “the Hoff”, a professor at her school, along with Chris, and Max, she is surprised when the letters she is translating prove to be more ominous and meaningful than she originally thought. Following the suspected Max to Prague after Chris’ murder, Nora and Adriane (Chris’ catatonic and left behind girlfriend) are encountered by an underground organization trying to solve the same mysterious puzzle as Nora’s professor – how to build the machine used to talk to God.

Impression

The beginning of this book is strong and an interesting page turner. Learning about the relationships and interactions between Nora, Chris and Adriane prior to Max’s arrival are enjoyable to read about. The work they are doing for the professor is interesting – Nora translates the letters of Elizabeth Weston, a real 16th century Czech poet, who wrote to her brother to describe the machine their father helped build with which one can talk to God, while the boys attempt to translate the Voynich manuscript, also a real piece of writing written in a language yet to be decoded. The story gets more interesting as a cult-like group is discovered to also be searching for this information and willing to kill for it. However, Wasserman’s writing is not for Hemingway fans – i.e. her sentences are long and drawn out (the book is 448 pages long). The story is intriguing but gets a little outlandish and unbelievable once Nora has been in Prague for sometime and the intentions of the cult are more explicit. Though a good read in many senses, the story could have been severely edited for extraneous story deviations that could have improved the flow and kept the story fast paced.

Reviews

“Readers who enjoy fast-paced, bloody, historically inflected thrillers in the vein of Dan Brown will be riveted.”

– Barry Goldblatt

“The teen designation feels less content- than market-driven. While depictions of violence and sexuality are more muted than the title suggests, Nora’s sensibility, casual independence and vocabulary are entirely adult.”

– Kirkus Review

Library Use

This book has been compared many times to The Da-Vinci Code by Dan Brown so I believe that in a library setting it would be perfect to introduce teens to the suspense/thriller genre while also encouraging them to look up information about history and geography. The book often mentions real events and describes Prague in some detail.

Referenes

Goldblatt, B. (2010, 13 February). Review of The Book of Blood and Shadow. Publishers Weekly. Retrieved from http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-375-86876-4.

Kirkus Review. (2012, 3 December). Review of The Book of Blood and Shadow. Kirkus Review. Retrieved from https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/robin-wasserman/book-blood-and-shadow/.

Wasserman, R. (2012). The Book of Blood and Shadow. New York, New York: Random House Children’s Books.