Katherine Neville's The Eight rides again

Recently, I've been seeing copies of Katherine Neville's 1988 novel The Eight popping up in prime bookstore real estate (stacks on the misleadingly-named "new releases" table, free-standing displays, etc.), and today I finally made the effort to find out why—turns out she's written a sequel, and it's coming out next week:


If you've never read The Eight, imagine a more girl-friendly version of The Da Vinci Code. There's a lot of codes, jumping back and forward in time, French Revolution hijinks, and mysterious chess set made out of gold, jewels, and creepy mojo. I read it in high school, and it struck me as being pretty over-the-top even then—but that certainly didn't stop me from charging right through each and every one of its 600-odd pages.