Dante's Equation - Jane Jensen

Denton Wyle – investigative reporter for ‘Mysterious World’, a magazine on paranormal occurrences is investigating mysterious disappearances. He follows up a lead about a Rabbi Yosef Kobinski, a Kabbalah scholar who vanished in a flash of light at Auschwitz.  Kobinski left behind a manuscript, “The Book of Torment” which Denton tries to acquire from various sources, feeling it holds a key to the mystery.

Aharon Handalman – a Rabbi in Jerusalem, studying the Torah for arrays, hidden occurrences of significant names in the holy book. Kobinski’s name features prominently and the more he investigates, the more concerned he is by the apocalyptic events it seems to presage.

Calder Ferris – Lieutenant in the US Marines, Department of Defense.  Interested in unusual physic phenomena and theories with potential military application. His dying former partner leaves him documentation on discoveries he has made on wave theory – the power to disrupt particles of matter.

Jill Talbot – Researcher at the University of Washington, Seattle. Researching wave mechanics, running tests on its ability to affect subatomic particles, she discovers that negative waves can be adjusted causing bizarre behaviour in test subjects, altering the balance of good and evil/creation and destruction.

Denton Wyle seems to get his breaks a little to easily, turning up arcane, ancient manuscripts almost as easy as purchasing them from Amazon.com. He meets the right people, information falls into his hands and before you know it he has the key to people’s disappearances. But when he starts to recognise the significance of what he is finding, things start to become a little more dangerous and unpredictable.  Handalman is well characterised – he is curious, investigative, but at the same time, he is afraid and draws back from what he might find, just as he draws back from the whole Holocaust experience, preferring not to dwell on its horrors. Farris is dangerous – his section reminding me very much of the ‘Millennium’ television series, someone who is looking for the bigger picture behind seemingly random, strange events. Jensen also cleverly puts most of the hard science into the Jill Talcott section, yet still makes it hugely readable and accessible with down to earth characters, and some tension generated by ‘Jill the Chill’, trying to keep her findings secret from her department and deal with her assistant’s Nate’s feelings towards her.

The book is well enough constructed, even perhaps a bit too neat, as you can see from very early on where each one is going and it is only really a matter of waiting for each of the threads to reach their destination and bring everything together. However, this doesn’t seem to matter as the whole thing is so damn readable, the characters are interesting and although you know where it is going you really don’t know what is going to happen when everyone gets there at the same time, only that the collision is sure to be apocalyptic.

Only it isn’t. Disappointingly, the second half of the book doesn’t live up to the promise of the first. Each of the characters being spun through to unimaginative alien worlds with a different good/evil balance corresponding to their own desires and personality – a jungle paradise, a war world, a vast technological city, a hell-world. It’s all very HG Wells, ‘The Time Machine’, Eloi and Morlocks, with strong “Forbidden Planet” influences which are clichéd, unoriginal and not well written. The propulsion and clear direction that gets us there seems to evaporate in the second half of the book, leaving the characters and readers lost and disoriented.

Still, this is pretty good stuff and it had me gripped for long periods. There are plenty of ideas and plenty of things happening to keep you constantly entertained throughout the 600 pages. Disappointing that it didn’t keep up the pace and excitement of the first half – this is a good book, but it could have been great.