Shattered Icon

by Bill Napier

Book Overview

As an antique map dealer in a small English town, Harry Blake appreciates the quiet life. But when a local landowner asks him to value a 400-year-old journal and is then brutally murdered twelve hours... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 074726726X
• ISBN13: 9780747267263
• Release Date: January 2004
• Publisher: Headline Book Publishing, Limited
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 0.46 lbs.
• Dimensions: 6.9" x 0.9" x 4.3"

Customer Reviews

Religious Fiction

Splintered Icon by Bill Napier is a terrific book. This book is the style of the religious relic searches with codes and old manuscripts and religious fanatics. Harry Blake is an antique map trader and he is given a translation of an ancient manuscript from someone that was on Sir Walter Raleigh's Roanoke expedition. This leads to a trip halfway around the world and attempts to coerce the key out of Harry, Zola Khan and Debbie Tebbet daughter of Sir Toby Tebbet the owner of the manuscript. I highly recommend this book if you like the Dan Brown type books.

A Good Historical and Modern Thriller Novel

I have procrastinated in getting this latest Bill Napier's novel for nine months, and eventually took a gamble buying one. The same novel was also titled as Splintered Icon. For fans of The Da Vinci code: do not expect something identical to Dan Brown's novel. This novel flips back and forth between current day and 200+ years ago. For the historical fiction part, I give this novel a five-star rating. It's like reading Wilbur Smith novels. The icon is supposedly from Christ himself and being sought after by the main protagonist and an old church faction fanatic-turned-terrorist. Lots of astronomy involved for Napier himself being an astronomy professor at a university in Scotland. The romances part of the plot also went quite well, though not outstanding. A four star read.

Fun and exciting and thought provoking

This book is just a bunch of fun. The author begins the book with excitement and it doesn't stop through out the whole story. The characters are believable, the plot line is easy to follow and the setting is just lovely. I know this won't be the last Bill Napier book I'm going to read. Well worth the money.

An excellent thrilling book

I read the review below by Mr Bowman with complete incredulity. I just bought the book and it's a fantastic read, a real page turner with an interesting story which reflects the desire for something which leads to really suspenseful and nail biting thrills. I couldn't put this book down and it's full of intriguing ideas and challenging original material. The Da Vinci Code is highly entertaining but I thought surprisingly poorly written - but I kept reading it because it has an "unputdownable"quality to it. Splintered Icon is an excellently written novel and it has the same "have to keep reading" quality as Da Vinci, and also it is written by someone who really knows their stuff; Icon maintains the tension until the very last page. The diary in Splintered Icon is superb, weaving a narrative that links with today in a vital and life or death manner. I'd also like to point out that the reference to the Da Vince Code was not made by the publishers but was made in reference to a quote - namely "Napier nimbly twists two separate tales into a thrilling novel of exploration, discovery, and ultimately survival. Fans of Dan Brown take note, this is a one sitting book." --Jack DuBrul, USA Today bestselling author of The Medusa Stone and so there is nothing "sameful" (shameful?) in quoting a best selling author and his opinion - this is entirely fair to quote Mr DuBrul who is after all a best selling author and knows his stuff. I wrote this review because I was so incensed that the other review could be so negative - it was plain unfair and I for once had to rise to defend a book I thoroughly enjoyed. This book is much better than Dan Brown I think, and I would urge readers to lose themselves in this fantastic piece of work.

An excellent read!

I discovered Bill Napier a few months ago when on a whim, I picked up Revelation at a local booksellers. I was amazed as it was just the kind of novel a person of science such as myself who loves adventure stories needed. Cryptonomicon was great but long, this was a nice shorter diversion though no less interesting.Then I bought Shattered Icon. Wow. What a good novel! Exciting, witty, historical adventure set in present times as well as the age of Sail! I thoroughly recommend Shattered Icon.