The Enigma Cube

Alien Artifact, Book 1

By: Douglas E. Richards

Narrated by: Dan Bittner

Length: 13 hrs and 31 mins

Publisher's Summary

A riveting near-future thriller. Brilliant, surprising, and unforgettable. From the NY Times best-selling author whose books have sold over a million copies.

"Richards is an extraordinary writer" (Dean Koontz) who can "keep you turning the pages all night long." (Douglas Preston) 

An alien object with breathtaking capabilities. And a life-and-death struggle for the future of humanity. 

Dr. Kelly Connolly is part of a top-secret team studying the most important find in human history - the Enigma Cube, an alien artifact of incomprehensible power. A cube whose technology can catapult civilization to dizzying heights - or destroy it entirely. 

After years of failed attempts to unlock the cube's secrets, all hell suddenly breaks loose. Kelly and a black-ops commando, Justin Boyd, are soon fighting against all odds to stay alive, and to keep the cube out of enemy hands. 

As the situation quickly goes from bad to worse, Kelly discovers that the cube is far more dangerous than even she had imagined. And that her actions could lead to nightmarish changes to the nature of reality itself.  

The Enigma Cube is a masterful thriller. One crammed with breakneck action, unexpected twists, mind-blowing science, and ethical dilemmas listeners will be contemplating long after they've listened to the last minute. 

"Richards is a worthy successor to Michael Crichton." (SF Book dot com)  

©2020 Douglas E. Richards (P)2020 Audible, Inc.

Stupid

The story line. at first, is interesting, but,the main characters are simplistic rather dull. Half way through, chapter 25, the plot gets stupid. Time to put this book down, in the trash, an go back to rereading 'Columbus Day' and the adventure of Skippy the magical beer can. At least that one is a fun read.

Amateurish

How many useless adjectives and adverbs can a writer cram into a sentence? Read a few paragraphs of this book and you'll find out. It's embarrassing how many people found this book "spellbinding" and "riveting". This book would receive a C+ in a high school freshman writing course. I have to ask, "who is this guys editor"? He or she should be fired immediately.

This is what is passing for contemporary science fiction now? Pathetic.

Awesome Book

When I saw the title, I thought "whoa, it's about the cube from The Prometheus Project!". Those books are amazing! In fact, my 7 year old wants to be a physicist when he grows up, because of these books. Anyway, The Enigma Cube was great. I love all of Douglas E Richard's books and this was no different. An awsome array of plausible future tech mixed with real history, and a love story mixed in for good measure... what more can you ask for? I love that I can learn something interesting about science, technology, and history, all while enjoying a thought provoking book. Well done!

stupid waste of time

plot good, narration good - kindergarden approach to information to support and character presentation which brings it all down to being stupid waste of time.

Terrible

Absurd plot, full of holes and inconsistencies. Childish dialog. Multiple historical factual errors. This book was a mess start to finish. It could have been a fun fictional romp with a creative alien artifact and some imaginative action sequences, but the author spends way too much time droning on about Nazi atrocities you’ve heard a hundred times before, mansplaining the moral justification for killing bad guys, and banging you over the head with simplistic character motivations. It makes you truly wonder who the heck is giving it four and five star reviews. Don’t waste your money.

9/12/2020 just started reading........🤔🙄

Love sci-if. Many times the stories reach pretty far into the unbelievable arena and that’s the fun of it. I usually appreciate a logical presentation of the ideas though. This is a quote talking about dark energy
detection and production by humans from chapter 6 or 7 -

‘We can directly detect dark energy very weakly, but can’t produce it.
America can produce it, but not detect it.
The ability to do both represents a giant step forward.’

If one has the ability to produce something they must have a way to detect the existence of that said product. The author could have written something like this that makes just as much sense logically -

‘We can directly detect garlic croutons very weakly, but can’t produce them,
America can produce garlic croutons, but not detect them.
The ability to do both represents a giant step forward.’
(I will continue listening and may change my review later)

Interesting Story, Poor Character Development.

The premise is interesting, but I personally found a lot of the dialogue between the main characters cliche and downright cringy at times. Also, one-dimensional nature of the characters was disappointing.

Overall, this book excels in the futuristic/science fiction and storytelling elements but the character development leaves a lot to be desired. I can see many people enjoying this book, but for me, the characters were so boring, I wouldn’t really recommend it.

Richards does it again

Richards crafts a clever and entertaining plot that is not predictable. His use of near term science enhances the story in a believable way. Two thumbs up.

Poorly researched

Does everything it can to demonize China, containing multiple falsehoods. Seemed like a CIA propaganda novel. The science represented was somewhat interesting however the writing was so juvenile that it was silly most of the time. Not recommended.

Yeech

Junior high school (super) heroes and villains. I could not finish it and finally gave up.