William Dietrich is the popular author of eight Ethan Gage adventures set during the Napoleonic wars, as well as natural history and environmental non-fiction. That authors I dislike gave quotes on the cover of Blood of the Reich should have been my first clue, but for a few hours on a plane I thought I would give it a try.
In 1938, a German Untersturmfuhrer is sent with a team by Reichsfuhrer Himmler to Tibet. Himmler is renovating Wewelsburg castle into a spiritual home for the order. He believes Tibetans are the true ancestors of the Nazis, a people with an unpolluted bloodline as well as the enormous mythical power of Shambala / Shangri-la which could be harnessed to tame the world. In America, a zoologist is asked by the government to track down and stop these Germans, with the help of Madame Chaing Kai-Shek and an adventurous female aviator. When everyone arrives in Shangri-La, they find an ancient Tibetan cyclotronic atom smasher and a source of perpetual youth, an order of renegade nuns, and the fight they were all looking for. That all the gates to Shangri-la can only be opened by a vial of the pure blood of the legendary Holy Roman Emperor Barbarossa is a thing... I didn't know that before.
Meanwhile in present day, a reporter kidnaps a young woman he believes is the descendant and heir to the maverick American zoologist and they both fly off (right past me through Seattle's Sea-Tac airport, where I sat reading this book) to Tibet in the footsteps of her great grandfather... Or, could he be an evil Nazi agent of the new Fourth Reich, who are determined once again to conquer the world by fusing a mystical Tibetan power source with the modern CERN super collider, releasing the universal dark matter of the Black Sun from the centre of the Earth the Nazis call Vril, which will make them immortal, so they can breed a new pure race, and she is the only descendant who has this 'pure' blood?
This begins with so much National Socialism and too many characters, I found it a jumble. Halfway it became a chase across the world, still with too many unnecessary characters. At the 300 page mark I was overloaded with plot, I just needed to sit down. The finale was even more implausible, throwing in particle physics and string theory on top of it all. This had three times too many diversions, lots of running around with the majority completely ridiculous. Thrill riders: If you like a lot of bang for your buck, this could be for you.
Must have been a lot of work to compile.
2011 / Paperback / 559 pages
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