Crucible [Unabridged CD] (Sigma Force, #14)

by James Rollins

In the race to save one of their own, Sigma Force must wrestle with the deepest spiritual mysteries of mankind in this mind-expanding adventure from the #1 New York Times bestselling author, told with his trademark blend of cutting edge science, historical mystery, and pulse-pounding action.

Arriving home on Christmas Eve, Commander Gray Pierce discovers his house ransacked, his pregnant lover missing, and his best friend's wife, Kat, unconscious on the kitchen floor. With no shred of evidence to follow, his one hope to find the woman he loves and his unborn child is Kat, the only witness to what happened. But the injured woman is in a semi-comatose state and cannot speak-until a brilliant neurologist offers a radical approach to "unlock" her mind long enough to ask a few questions.

What Pierce learns from Kat sets Sigma Force on a frantic quest for answers that are connected to mysteries reaching back to the Spanish Inquisition and to one of the most reviled and blood-soaked books in human history-a Medieval text known as the Malleus Maleficarum, the Hammer of Witches. What they uncover hidden deep in the past will reveal a frightening truth in the present and a future on the brink of annihilation, and force them to confront the ultimate question: What does it mean to have a soul

• ISBN10: 0062890417
• ISBN13: 9780062890412
• Publish Date: 17 December 2018
• Publish Status: Active
• Out of Print: 18 May 2021
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: HarperCollins Publishers
• Format: Audiobook
• Duration: 0 hours and 12 minutes
• Language: English
• URL: http://harpercollins.com.au/9780062890412

Reviews

[Jeff Sexton]

Can Even Sigma Defeat This Threat? Honestly, the best thing about this book is that Rollins ups the stakes *so much* that the threat feels *all too real* - even moreso than during the events of The Demon Crown. And yes, in part this is because I'm reading this book - where the science involved is fully realized Artificial General Intelligence - in 2023, when it seems we hear every day that this is truly just days away from actually being real. But also because of Rollins' writing and what he is willing to put the characters we've come to love so much through. The team is actually split in *three* ways here, rather than the more typical two, and with each feeding on the other (as usual)... pulse pounding at its finest. Rollins truly makes you feel that even Sigma is actually being gravely threatened - and that is a true talent, after spending so many books showing them to be almost a John Cena type of organization, able to take any beating that comes their way and ultimately win anyway. Combining the science of AI with the history of the witch purges and in particular the Spanish Inquisition - which was still raging as recently as just 200 yrs ago - was truly inspired here, and works quite well - even moreso with the particularly shocking revelation in the end that ties all the way back to the very first words of the book. Truly one of the better Sigma books, but absolutely one that needs to be read at minimum in order as a trilogy with this being Book Three and The Seventh Plague and The Demon Crown being books 1 and 2, respectively. (Even if you don't go back and re-read the *entire* Sigma story before coming into this one.) Very much recommended.