The Eight Kather­ine Neville
Bal­lan­tine Books 1990World­Cat • Library­Thing • Google Books • Book­Finder 

My friend Jeff gave me this book when I was in LA audi­tion­ing for USC. He told me that it has a com­pelling plot, but that it isn’t very well writ­ten. “Good plane read­ing,” he said. I agree com­pletely: The Eight is a real page-turner that had me rolling my eyes at reg­u­lar intervals.

Kather­ine Neville’s 598-page behe­moth has two related plots. The chap­ters alter­nate between rev­o­lu­tion­ary France (and other parts of the world at the same his­tor­i­cal period) and the present day. The plot revolves around the Mont­glane Ser­vice, a fic­tional chess set given to Charle­magne by a Moor­ish lord. Nat­u­rally, the Ser­vice is imbued with unspeak­able ancient power and must be kept out of the wrong hands. The pow­ers of good have pro­tected the Ser­vice for hun­dreds of years, finally split­ting it up and hid­ing it around the globe. This dras­tic mea­sure hap­pens at the begin­ning of the 18^th cen­tury plot. The remain­der of that plot and the 20^th cen­tury plot con­cern keep­ing the Ser­vice out of the hands of power-hungry baddies.

As if this isn’t ridicu­lous enough already, Ms. Neville feels the need to include as many his­tor­i­cal fig­ures as pos­si­ble in her nar­ra­tive. These fig­ures are not merely men­tioned; nearly all of them play an active role in the plot. I’ve already men­tioned Charle­magne, and here’s a par­tial list of the oth­ers: Jacques-Louis David, Charles Mau­rice de Tal­leyrand, Ger­maine de Staël, Car­di­nal Riche­lieu, Voltaire, Cather­ine the Great, Leon­hard Euler, Max­im­i­lien Robe­spierre, André Phili­dor, Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach, Napoleon Bona­parte, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, William Wordsworth, William Blake, Jean Paul Marat, Char­lotte Cor­day, Bene­dict Arnold, James Boswell, Sir Isaac New­ton, Alexan­der Hamil­ton, and Ben­jamin Franklin.

In addi­tion to all these his­tor­i­cal fig­ures, Neville throws in the Freema­sons, the Hashishin, the Baby­lo­ni­ans, the Phoeni­cians, the Egyp­tians, and a num­ber of other ancient cul­tures. She even makes the claim that the secret hid­den within the Mont­glane Ser­vice is what allowed ancient cul­tures to build things like the pyra­mids of Egypt. Because, as we all know, ancient peo­ples were com­pletely igno­rant of things like math­e­mat­ics, archi­tec­ture, engi­neer­ing, and basic physics, and must have had spe­cial help to build their tem­ples and mon­u­ments. At least she doesn’t sug­gest that aliens built the pyramids.

Mov­ing beyond prob­lems of con­tent, I have one huge com­plaint about Neville’s writ­ing style: her use of slap-you-in-the-face fore­shad­ow­ing. She never hints at future plot devel­op­ments; she pep­pers her first-person nar­ra­tive with state­ments like, “Lit­tle did I know that [upcom­ing event] would change my life for­ever!” It’s as though she wants to be damn sure that she never sur­prises the reader with any of her ridicu­lous — yet often pre­dictable — plot developments.

In sum­mary, The Eight is even more ridicu­lous than The Loch in terms of his­tor­i­cal tie-ins. It’s more ridicu­lous than The Da Vinci Code in terms of ancient secrets and inter­na­tional, multi-generational secret soci­eties and con­spir­a­cies. At 598 pages, it’s a lit­tle long for plane read­ing, unless one is stuck with mul­ti­ple flights and long lay­overs. The plot does dis­suade one from putting the book down, but one must take reg­u­lar breaks for eye-rolling and excla­ma­tions of “Oh, come on!”