Author: Eva St John
The Quantum Curators series by Eva St John has five books and this blog is about book 3, so it has been a while since I have followed the adventures of Julius and Neith and it is my favourite genre, so you can guess I loved this book. I love the Quantum Curator series so much that I do not read them in a go but savour them to make them last longer. Book three of the Quantum Curator series focuses on the missing codex, which was left as a cliffhanger in book 2 of the series.
So whilst in the first two books we follow time travel to save nearly destroyed or lost artefacts from the Beta planet (due to the violent nature of Betas that have many wars, Alphas do not have), and Julius’ move to Alpha and training to become a quantum curator (see here and here), in this book, the Alpha planet finds itself under an attack by Gods and nobody knows where they came from. Some Gods are from well-known mythology, such as Loki, but there are some St John added, so it makes quite a nice mix and St John portrays them quite well.
I really enjoyed how she played with mythology and incorporated it into an otherwise typical time travel/multiple universe book series. I also enjoyed the Firenze character towards the end of the book and her Godly appearance albeit she is not a Goddess (I will not spoil and say what she is so you need to read the book). Her description reminded me of popular descriptions of Hina, the Polynesian goddess of the Moon (see a picture here) and a portrayal of mermaids (see here and also here).
There are two particularly interesting narratives in this book of the Quantum Curator series, one is the role of Leonardo da Vinci and the other one is the notion of an infinite number of planets. So, whilst on Beta Planet there is a theory of multiverse but no technology to explore the theory, on the Alpha Planet there is a very strict view that there are only two earths, Alpha and Beta and any consideration of anything different is banned and can warrant one a death penalty conducted by engineers whilst the citizens of Alpha have their behaviour conditioned not to doubt the two-planets narrative.
So, whilst in the first two books Alpha planet is shown as the planet of reason, high technology, no inequality and wars, no poverty and all yay yay, this book shows that things are not always what they seem because Alpha also has its villains who collaborate with Gods to destroy Alpha’s way of living. I will not disclose where these Gods came from and what happened not to spoil but the narrative is very interesting and highly unusual for a time travel/multiple universe book as the author very nicely plays with questioning the religion, paganism and mythology whilst keeping the narrative of multiple universes and showing what happens when we impede the freedom of speech and scientific inquiry. A calamity, as described very well in this book….
Another thing that is worth mentioning is the role of Leonardo da Vinci and the codex, which was disclosed to be missing in the previous book but is the main point of this book as our quantum curators look for it frantically competing with villains whilst fighting Gods. The Codex is written, in the book by Leonardo da Vinci and by the end of the book we discover the true narrative of what da Vinci actually did, which is quite a significant discovery in the narrative but again, I will not spoil it. I was particularly interested in this part and the time travel of our quantum curators to save da Vinci, the codex and the history including their visit to La Gioconda who portrayed the Mona Lisa in a famous painting by Da Vinci and who may or may not have access to the codex in the narrative.
Leonardo da Vinci was indeed credited with scientific inquiry and there is information that according to many of his writings, he predicted many inventions well ahead of time, sometimes he was hundreds of years ahead of his time in his thinking. There is even exposure of artefacts made from his notes. Thus, there are conspiracy theories that he in fact did invent time travel and that he was a time traveller himself, which have found their place in other books such as the famous The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown albeit in this book Brown plays with the notion of the Holy Grail and claims that Mary Magdalene might be a Holy Grail herself. In a similar vein, St John also poses a question who or what is the codex?
A very interesting continuation of this remarkable Quantum Curator book series and needless to say I already started book four. I am not sure, given how this is developing, that I will be able to read slowly and savour these books as it is getting very, very interesting.
Thank you for reading!