Like his last book (Exile), Eclipse centers around a hopeless love story. This book is loosely based on Nigeria, where a ruthless kleptocratic dictator slaughters a village and prosecutes a pacifist, while living off well off oil royalties and worldwide needs. ( )

Complex description of a movement in a small country in Africa. Much sadness, human rights atrocities, corruption. I struggled with this book, trying to get into it - but much of it was confusing. Hard to keep some of the characters straight. Eventually, over halfway through the book, it became easier. Not one of my favorite books by Richard North Patterson. ( )

Very suspensful. Was a little disappointed in the end - it was realistic, but I'm enough of a romantic that I wanted to see everything work out in the end. ( )

In Eclipse, Damon Pierce is an Irish lawyer, who despite success that he has experienced in his career, seems to be drifting listlessly. That changes when he gets a frantic message from Marissa Okari, an old friend of his who he had a romantic interest in that never materialized. Marissa is living in a fictional African country with her husband Bobby, who is protesting against his country’s government as well as Petro Global, a large oil conglomerate. Bobby has been arrested and is scheduled to be executed unless Damon can perform some heroics and save the day. This leads Damon to Africa where he uncovers layers of conspiracies.

For me this novel was a mixed bag. I didn’t appreciate the heavy-handed approach the author used to tell his story. If I wanted to be inundated with political opinion I would watch a cable news show and watch the talking heads. This isn’t what I want in my fiction. Furthermore, the facts that Patterson extols don’t hold up over time. He’s dead wrong on many of his suppositions, which really hurts his credibility. For those reasons, I couldn’t really get into this novel. On the plus side, I thought the characters were fairly well-developed. I also thought there was sufficient tension in the novel and a reasonable ending. In the end, this is just an okay novel. I didn’t hate it, but I certainly didn’t love it.

Carl Alves – author of Reconquest: Mother Earth ( )

The first part of this novel was riveting, but after that I simply lost interest. However, I don't think the fault lies with the book which is well-written and suspenseful and deals with important issues. I guess I just wasn't in the mood for this style of heavy-handed activism. A different reader will probably enjoy it. ( )