Sheba

Rating:
Summary: A "fair" Higgins book, but not on par with the best.
Review: Definitely a slow starter, and once the action begins, it's pretty tame anyhow. Perhaps my least favorite Higgins book, and that largely due to it's predictablity and similarity to Indy stuff...worth a read, I suppose.

Rating:
Summary: Just didn't have the right stuff to end it
Review: Higgins had all the right ingredients - 1. Archeological background that dated to the days of King Solomon. 2. Nazi plot to assault the Suez Canal to show Britain her determination after taking Poland 3. Beautiful woman in search of her missing British archaelogist who had earlier went off in search for the legendary Temple of Sheba 4. An archaeologist-mercenary-smuggler Yank who is like Indiana Jones gone native 5. A beautiful smart mixed-blooded businesswoman who liked nothing better but meddle in affairs of other people, always accompanied by a hulk of an escaped slave with a life-debt (think Chewbacca) 6. A host of desertmen, Arabs, throw in even a German professor and Greek moneyman

Then it all started to go wrong. Using the title "Sheba", what could have been a pulp 30s adventure in the mysterious Orient just didn't turn out. Higgins had the ingredients but just didn't know how to produce the right product. Such a mystical name, Sheba, didn't deserve the ignominious treatment Higgins dished out.

It's acceptable that the characters didn't have the same depth and complexity as Macbeth by Shakespeare. It's pulp fiction. It's fine that the Nazi plot failed, we know anyway that the Suez wasn't destroyed in WW2. But we also know the Germany didn't win and Churchchill wasn't kidnapped (or was he?) and these didn't detract from his other works, including the famed "The Eagle has landed".

It would have been better if Higgins had collaborated with another writer who knows how to use the ingredients better.

Rating:
Summary: A Dissapointing Book!
Review: I had previously read my first Higgins book "Eye of the Strom". I could hardly wait to read "Sheba". At first the book showed signs of life. The more that I read the worse it got. A book about doing battle with the Nazis in the desert in Egypt showed great promise. Our hero and the lady hunting for her husband had started the book off on a good footing. Then the book fell apart. The plot hit rock bottom. The hoped for action never took place. The excitement level of this book was a 1 on a scale of 1 to 10. I began to wonder if Higgins had hired a ghost writer. I was glad that I finally finished the book so that I could be through with it.A very dissapointing book.I do not reccomend it to anyone.

Rating:
Summary: Terrible read
Review: I recently picked this up in an airport and knocked it off in the first few hours of a seven hour flight. The first thirty pages promised something fun and exciting - a World War II adventure along the lines of an Indiana Jones flick. But this book is absolutely terrible! Boring stock characters combined with a plot that specifically avoided each and every interesting turn it may have taken, opting instead for boring scenarios that the most run-of-the-mill TV shows would be embarrassed of.

It sucked.

Rating:
Summary: this wwII thriller is a true grabber.
Review: This book is a great grabber. Don't start this book unless you have read all of the others. % star reading at it's best.

Rating:
Summary: Great Idea and beginning botched to the extreme!
Review: This book starts off like a classic adventure in the desert - `Raiders of The Lost Ark' or `King Solomon's Mines'. But Higgins phones this one in; that is, what starts as a geo-political romp with Nazis chasing lost treasures is quickly turned he-man superman heroics. Charcaters (i.e. Muller) are inconsistent and unrecognizable; the dialogue pulp and stilted as a B action movie; the action unbelievable and the ending a yawner. I wanted a Good adventure, which Higgins has provided me over many novels, but I got junk. Very disappointing!

Rating:
Summary: Great Idea and beginning botched to the extreme!
Review: This book starts off like a classic adventure in the desert - `Raiders of The Lost Ark' or `King Solomon's Mines'. But Higgins phones this one in; that is, what starts as a geo-political romp with Nazis chasing lost treasures is quickly turned he-man superman heroics. Charcaters (i.e. Muller) are inconsistent and unrecognizable; the dialogue pulp and stilted as a B action movie; the action unbelievable and the ending a yawner. I wanted a Good adventure, which Higgins has provided me over many novels, but I got junk. Very disappointing!

Rating:
Summary: A pretty good adventure novel.
Review: This is another Jack Higgins adventure novel. Well written, good plot, likeable characters. A little slow in some parts, such as the beginning, but when the adventure comes it is fun to read. A person looking for a book somewhat similiar to The Indiana Jones movies, look to Sheba. But don't get to hyped up out about it. It isn't near as good as Indy, but it is still fun. I think most adventure lovers, will find this book fair enough

Rating:
Summary: mediocre at best
Review: This is very average fiction from Jack Higgins, a writer who is capable of delivering better. He simply doesn't do much with Sheba, and the reader comes away disappointed overall.

Rating:
Summary: Great Adventure
Review: This was an almost perfect adventure. To have been written almost forty years ago, it still stands up. Keep in mind this novel was written almost twenty years before Indiana Jones. Makes you think maybe ole Jack Higgins influenced the creators of the famous archaeologists....