This book just didn't do it for me. I never really got hooked, and mostly felt indifferent reading it. It has all the right ingredients - a historical treasure and plenty of action. I don't mind suspending disbelief (for example, I really enjoyed The Ark by Boyd Morrison and Angels and Demons by Dan Brown), but this book fell flat for me. ( )

After a holiday in China, a novel featuring Marco Polo and the hunt for “his final legacy… the mythical treasure” sounded just the thing.

What is not made clear though is that this is the third in The Hunters series: 13th Century Italian trader Marco Polo was welcomed to China by Kublai Khan, but the riches he amassed went missing. The Hunters use Polo’s secret diary to find it but they are not the only ones in search of the treasure.

I found it tedious but Prisoner’s Gold won The Thriller Award for Book of the Year 2016 though, so someone liked it. ( )

This is the third book in The Hunters series, featuring an elite group put together to hunt the world's archaeological mysteries and treasures. In this adventure they are after the lost treasure of Marco Polo. They are being chased by a group of Chinese thugs who want to make sure that any treasure discovered never leaves China. We also know that some other group is tracking them in a very sophisticated way. While the team is working for Jean Marc Papineau, they are only beginning to suspect that he has an unknown boss watching them from the shadows.

One of the best parts about this series is the team itself. Each one has some sort of unique skill that is integral to the whole operation. I felt like this book was better than the previous two books, which I still enjoyed a lot. It's an action adventure genre so it's inevitably going to follow a more formulaic style. I do give Kuzneski credit for throwing in something unexpected in every book, which keeps the story and characters very fresh. It's great fun and I look forward to reading the next book in the series. ( )

[The Prisoner's Gold] by Chris Kuzneski
The Hunters series Book #3
5★'s

What's It About?
At the end of the 13th century, Chinese Emperor Kublai Khan gave an Italian merchant unfettered access to his kingdom. The traveler was Marco Polo, and his journey would become legendary. Aided by a special passport that protected him throughout the land, Polo amassed unbelievable wealth and hid it before his return to Italy. To this day, the location of his treasure remains a mystery.

The Hunters—an elite group assembled by an enigmatic billionaire to locate the world’s greatest treasures—are tasked with finding the missing fortune. Guided by firsthand accounts of Polo’s travels, they quickly discover there are hostile forces willing to do anything to stop them from taking the riches from Chinese soil. Before long, the treasure hunt becomes a deadly game of cat-and-mouse that will rewrite history while taking the lives of many.

What Did I Think?
This is an exceptional series written by a very talented writer. The excitement is high level... going from a car chase to an air chase to fights to shooting and everything imaginable in between. This one had a twist that I didn't see coming, but it was a good thing. Glad it wasn't like the twist in the book before this one. You really must read this series in order or you will never figure out what is happening or why. This series will appeal to all that like a good thriller with plenty of action and a large dose of history. ( )