The Eight
Katherine Neville
"I read this book about five years ago and - again, I love playing chess, and so on Craig's List, some - a woman wanted to learn how to play chess, and so I gave her a free lesson, and in return for the lesson, she made me dinner and gave me this book called The Eight. It takes place over two time periods, and the eight, I think symbolically, they're - it has a lot of different things; there are eight columns and rows on a chessboard. It also is a symbol for infinity when you put it around, so - it takes - I don't want to give the book away, but it takes place - I think there's two time lines; one's set in modern-day America and one is set in revolutionary France, around the French Revolution.
I loved the chess motif. It didn't really go into any of the moves or anything like that, but it was interesting how chess was woven in. I mean, I think this is probably a criticism for most of the pulp fiction, is that you can kind of see the ending coming a long way away. So I think it was a little bit formulaic.
It was a fun read. If I were to rate this book, I would rate this as four stars out of five. I think it's a very good book. I liked the twin timeline, the back-and-forth between both the French Revolution and modern-day America, and I think - my only criticism is that the book tends to be a little bit formulaic at the end."
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