The Last Odyssey

October 1, 2019

A half mile beneath the frozen (if melting) tundra of (not-for-sale) Greenland, archaeologists find a medieval ship whose hold contains Bronze Age artifacts, including a clockwork gold atlas ringed by silver astrolabe crafted by a Muslim inventor named Ismail al-Jazari who inspired Leonardo Da Vinci. The moving globe reveals Odysseus unexpectedly following an underground river to dark Tartarus (that's ancient Greek for hell), and now the entire war- and terrorist-ridden region is in an uproar, which puts Sigma Force front and center. With a 350,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from February 3, 2020
Bestseller Rollins’s excellent 15th Sigma Force novel (after 2018’s Crucible) marries nail-biting action with a highly imaginative premise. Elena Cargill, an archaeologist and paleoanthropologist, rushes to Greenland at the behest of a friend, Maria Crandall, who’s a member of Sigma, a U.S. government organization that retrains gifted soldiers in various scientific disciplines. Crandall has learned of an amazing find beneath a giant iceberg—an Arab oceanic merchant vessel, apparently shipwrecked in the ninth century. Cargill and two colleagues visit the ship, in which they discover such wonders as a three-dimensional gold map embedded with an astrolabe, before coming under attack from a group of Middle Easterners, who take Cargill hostage. Crandall and other Sigma Force members later embark on a mission to save Cargill and understand the significance of the vessel, which may be connected with the historical basis for Homer’s Odyssey and a lost nation that destroyed three major civilizations between 1100 BCE and 900 BCE. Rollins sprinkles in enough facts and details to make what could have been an over-the-top premise plausible. This is a thoughtful, nonstop thrill ride that’s an exemplar of an escapist page-turner. Author tour. Agents: Russ Galen, Scovil Galen Ghosh Literary Agency; and Danny Baror, Baror International.

March 1, 2020
Sigma Force roars back into action after a startling discovery: a medieval seagoing vessel buried deep under the Greenland ice that contains a mysterious globe that appears to chart Odysseus' last voyage, including the path under the sea to the mythical Gates of Hell. Could an underground river beneath the Mediterranean Sea actually exist? A megalomaniac is determined to use the secrets stored aboard the buried ship to change the world according to his own twisted dreams, and it's up to Sigma Force, the globe-trotting, troubleshooting arm of the Department of Defense's DARPA, to stop him?even if it means going to where no mortal has gone. Rollins is one of those writers whose name assures certain guarantees. You know you'll be treated to lots of slam-bang action, larger-than-life heroes and villains, snappy dialogue, and a plot that stretches credibility almost to the breaking point. Like Matthew Reilly, who writes novels in a broadly similar vein, Rollins is a master of the genre, able to sweep us up and carry us along until he brings the story to a riveting conclusion.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)