The Eye of God

A Sigma Force Novel, Book 9

By: James Rollins

Narrated by: Christian Baskous

Length: 14 hrs and 43 mins

Publisher's summary

In The Eye of God, a Sigma Force novel, New York Times best-selling author James Rollins delivers an apocalyptic vision of a future predicted by the distant past.

In the wilds of Mongolia, a research satellite has crashed, triggering an explosive search for its valuable cargo: a code-black physics project connected to the study of dark energy...and a shocking image of the eastern seaboard of the United States in utter ruin.

At the Vatican, a package arrives containing two strange artifacts: a skull scrawled with ancient Aramaic and a tome bound in human skin. DNA evidence reveals that both came from the same body: the long-dead Mongol king Genghis Khan.

Commander Gray Pierce and Sigma Force set out to discover a truth tied to the fall of the Roman Empire, to a mystery going back to the birth of Christianity, and to a weapon hidden for centuries that holds the fate of humanity.

©2013 James Czajkowski (P)2013 HarperCollinsPublishers

Not as good as others in the series.

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

Yes - if reading the series.

Did the plot keep you on the edge of your seat? How?

This plot was more predictable than some others in the series.

What did you like about the performance? What did you dislike?

New reader for this book. The characters' voices were too similar-- the Italian characters sounded Asian, like the Asian characters.

Narration is DEPLORABLE!

What did you like best about The Eye of God? What did you like least?

I enjoyed the story. As with most of Rollins' books, I liked the way that he tied things together. This one was certainly a stretch but I'm willing to suspend belief for a while when I'm reading.

As for what I liked least.....dear God....the narration.

Would you be willing to try another one of Christian Baskous’s performances?

Absolutely not. I already got the next Rollins/Baskous book and I've decided to return it. Baskous may be a good fit for some books (those that have only one character) but he can't come close to pulling off these books. His accents are horrible. Most of the time he made Rachel sound more Asian than Seichan and the fact that he couldn't correctly pronounce Vigor nearly drove me to start smoking.

Any additional comments?

I can only assume that Christian Baskous is blackmailing James Rollins because there really is no other plausible explanation as to why he would continue to sign off on letting this man narrate his books. Save the credit.

Great series. But this narrator is pretty bad.

I love the series, they are really interesting and fun to listen to. But this narrator is the worst in this series so far. His accents aren't very good and they change from book to another. Maybe I'm just being a bit critical, but it's annoying..

An amazing adventure

I loved this book in the Sigma Force series. James always takes us on an amazing adventure.

Not his best work....Is sigma getting drawn out?

Any additional comments?

Poor performance and mediocre story at best. I am a die hard fan of the series and I had trouble getting through this one. As other reviews stated, the narrator is not good, but the story is not a whole lot better.

This story does have the same race against the clock urgency to it, and I like the intelligence of the dark energy discussions. I even like the new character, the African American female scientist. But this book is missing an arch nemesis, a "specter like" organization that is trying to manipulate the world as sigma races to overcome the best laid plans.

I will read the next book in the series, but I hope the publisher finds a better narrator.

Performance is sub par at best

Just finished this listen. As usual, Rollins story telling craft is wonderful. I have really enjoyed this series. That is until this narrator. All the characters have an Asian sound. I can’t tell the Italians from the English or Americans. Looking ahead the series continues with Baskous. So, Eye of God may be my last listening experience with this series.

Poor narration

Story was good but narration is poor. Bring back Peter Fernandez. He is very good.

Story is great, reader is boring

I loved the story and all of James Rollins’ novels. But the reader is boring, monotone, and does not distinguish characters well.

Good Story, Poorly Performed

I have to agree with the other reviewers: Audiobook publishers should not change narrators in the middle of a series ... unless, of course, they switch to a 𝘣𝑒𝘵𝘵𝑒𝘳 narrator -- which they didn't, in this case -- or the original actor becomes unavailable. Peter Jay Fernandez -- the original narrator of Rollins' Sigma Force Series -- did a good job narrating the previous episodes, so why did the publisher switch to a less accomplished actor? Did Fernandez get too expensive? Too busy? Did he get sick? I know that he didn't die, at least as of this writing .... As previous reviewers have pointed out, Christian Baskous -- the actor chosen to narrate "The Eye of God" -- does not have Fernandez' acting chops, semi-spoiling this audiobook. I still recommend this audiobook to inveterate Rollins fans -- like me -- but prepare yourselves for awkward, amateurish, distracting narration. In Baskous' defense, I can safely say that he has a nice voice. Perhaps he will, in time, develop into a better audiobook narrator.

As for the story, "The Eye of God" extrapolates Rollins' stellar trajectory. (I am excluding "The Blood Gospel" from that trajectory, since Rollins had a debilitating co-author for that one.) Rollins fans already know that they need to pretty much completely suspend disbelief whenever they pick up a Rollins audiobook. "The Eye of God" continues that trend, and continues Rollins' joyous exploration into the weird world of quantum physics -- in this case, Dark Energy (again -- see "Deep Fathom"). If you enjoy opening your mind to outlandish speculation, then I think that you will probably enjoy "The Eye of God," even despite its unfortunate choice of narrator.

Change of narrator downgrades the story line

I have tried to listen to this story three or four times, but have been unable to do so because listening to the current narrator so destroyed the experience for me. Finally forced to check out the written version from the library because I really wanted to finish the book. Sometimes a story line can be forever linked to the voice of a particular narrator and this was true of Peter Fernandez.