Blood of the Reich

BLOOD OF THE REICH
William Dietrich
Harper
Harper Collins
July 2011
Paperback
January 2012
ISBN-13: 978-0-06-198919-3
550 pages
$ 9.99

Rominy Pickett lives a quiet single life in Seattle but is upset about the man who seems to be stalking her at the grocery store. She is proud that she has earned money for her new car and would like to find a special man, even at the grocery store. However, this man just seems too interested in her. When this strange man tackles her as her car blows up in the parking lot, she discovers her life is being hurled into an adventure that she could never have imagined.

What she didn’t plan was to discover was her own heritage! Being that she was adopted by her parents, she didn’t know anything before about her biological parents. It took a grocery store stalker to inform her about her Aryan heritage, especially that she was basically Nazi royalty.

Blood of the Reich is an adventure with the reestablishing of the Nazi party through their search for the source of the Aryan race and the continuation of the pure blood lines literally traveling from Seattle to Tibet to Switzerland.

The history infused reflects around Heinrich Himmler and many of his plans and research in Tibet. It is well known that the Nazi party sent an expedition into Tibet to discover their connection with the Aryan race through the myths of Shambhala or Shangrila. Also intertwined is a quick physics lesson regarding the CERN supercollider in Switzerland.

There were some errors that distracted from the story such as being unable to buy airline tickets with a credit card and cash being preferred. Wouldn’t terrorists be more inclined to buy one-way tickets with cash? Also how can a Buddhist nun who has a shaven head have enough hair to be grabbed? There is also confusion about blood in a centrifuge spinning until the cells fall to the bottom of the tube and the blood plasma being separated.

The story was reminiscent of an Indiana Jones adventure with the main characters never being able to rest and never knowing who they could truly trust. The value of Blood of the Reich is the history of the Nazi party focused on one of the many fascinations of pure bloodlines. This was an enthralling and fast-paced novel with phenomenal descriptions especially about Tibet.

Although this particular novel was not part of the Ethan Gage series, the heroine, Rominy Pickett, still needs further character development if she is part of a new spin-off series. Also, this story was not as tightly-wound as previous novels by William Dietrich. It’s a decent story but the errors, although small, did distract from the story.

I still look forward though to the next William Dietrich novel. Overall, his adventurous writing makes a wonderful journey.