Thoughts on: Prince of Fire by Daniel Silva

About:
Prince of Fire by Daniel Silva is the fifth book in the Gabriel Allon series. Unlike the pre­vi­ous books, this one takes place mostly in Israel as oppose to Europe.

• 432 pages
• Pub­lisher: Signet
• ISBN: 0451215737

My rat­ing for Prince of Fire — 4

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Thoughts:
Prince of Fire by Daniel Silva (web­site) is another action packed book in the series about my new favorite recur­ring char­ac­ter. This book dif­fers from the pre­vi­ous ones because it takes place mostly in Israel, as oppose to Europe, and does not have a holo­caust connection.

In the pre­vi­ous books, Daniel Silva unleashed his furi­ous pen on Euro­pean coun­tries expos­ing their hypocrisy over their role in the Holo­caust. This time how­ever the author tar­gets one per­son, Yasser Arafat. Arafat, who died shortly after the novel came out, is depicted as a liar, a racist and a despi­ca­ble human being who is resist­ing peace, mak­ing the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple suf­fer, for no good reason.

With all the action and adven­ture, this is ulti­mately a melan­choly book. Allon is a flawed hero (but aren’t they all), who is, this time, out for revenge. The only prob­lem is the old Chi­nese proverb “He who seeks vengeance must dig two graves: one for his enemy and one for him­self” was true thou­sands of years ago as well as it is today.

The one aspect of the book which really touched me was when Allon’s boss, Ari Sham­ron, tells him:

"…Michael is the high­est, but you, Gabriel, you are the might­i­est. You're the one who defends Israel against its accusers. You're the angel of judgment–the prince of fire”.

The book is filled with old friends, as well as new char­ac­ters. Allon’s back­ground, his per­sonal and pro­fes­sional his­tory out­lined in the pre­vi­ous books add much depth as well as the his­tor­i­cal back­ground which is explained in neat and under­stand­able lan­guage, as much as these com­plex issues will allow.
Daniel Silva, an effi­cient writer if there is one, keeps his sto­ries excit­ing and high in ten­sion while explor­ing issues that could be in the news.

Even though I did not guess the finale, I felt that the author rushed the end­ing a bit. Really an insignif­i­cant com­plaint, I just noticed because of my immense enjoy­ment from the pre­vi­ous books.

The Prince of Fire is a good book, if you enjoyed the pre­vi­ous books have no fear, you’ll enjoy this one as well.

Syn­op­sis:
Art restorer Gabriel Allon is, once again, called to action, one last time (once again), by the Israeli intel­li­gence ser­vice. A truck bomb exploded in the Israeli embassy in Rome, how­ever the Israelis obtained a com­puter disk from the ter­ror­ists in which they dis­cov­ered pic­tures of Allon and his lover as well as notes about his real iden­tity. Also found are evi­dence Yasser Arafat him­self ordered the elim­i­na­tion of Allon which resulted in the death of Allon’s son and the maim­ing of his wife.

The Israeli intel­li­gence believe the bomb is related to the 1994 bomb­ing of a Jew­ish com­mu­nity cen­ter in Buenos Aires, Argentina and a bomb­ing of the main syn­a­gogue of Istan­bul, Turkey in 2003.

Allon, along with a team of agents, focus on three gen­er­a­tions: Sheikh Asad who led the Arab Revolt in 1936, his son Sabri, a friend of Yas­sir Arafat and Sabri’s son Khaled. Adopted by Arafat after Sabri’s assis­na­tion, Allon is now charged with find­ing Khaled.

Buy & Save on Prince of Fire through the ManOfLa­Book affil­i­ate account on:
Ama­zon | Kin­dle | Book Depos­i­tory US | Book Depos­i­tory UK

More books by Daniel Silva

Zohar — Man of la Book
Dis­claimer: I bought this book.
Arti­cle first pub­lished as Book Review: Prince of Fire by Daniel Silva on Blogcritics.

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