James Rollins has been writing terrific speculative fiction steeped in just enough history and scientific fact to keep the most astute reader wondering what is real and what is the product of his fertile imagination.

THE BONE LABYRINTH is the 11th installment in the Sigma Force series and may well be the best yet. Rollins has always run in the same circle as his contemporaries, authors like Steve Berry and Brad Thor. With this latest effort, I offer up Dan Brown for inclusion in this group as it is that good and frighteningly addictive. What makes the book work, and the pages turning, are all the balls Rollins is able to keep up in the air. He tackles so many different subjects --- each of which would make a fine solo novel --- and is able to tie them all together into a cohesive thriller that guarantees to keep you reading late into the evening.

"By the end of the novel, readers will be too busy buzzing with excitement about all they have digested to realize what a literary feat Rollins has accomplished by keeping all these balls in the air without dropping a single one."

If there is one basic theme in THE BONE LABYRINTH, it is the question of who we are as a species and where we are heading next. The historical context for the novel begins with the work of the 17th-century Jesuit priest Father Athanasius Kircher and a monk born centuries later by the name of Father Carlos Crespi.

Kircher mastered dozens of disciplines and was compared to Leonardo da Vinci. His work inspired everyone from Newton to Verne to Poe. Crespi also involved himself in many things but was most well known for his archaeological finds --- specifically those that focused on lost civilizations like Atlantis. Oddly enough, the famous astronaut Neil Armstrong was part of an expedition in 1976 that sought out a subterranean library to which Crespi had referred. This coincidence will definitely be used by Rollins at some point.

On to Sigma Force. Commander Gray Pierce and his team split up to chase various leads and plot elements. Gray is focused on the tracing of human intelligence to its true source, which will involve digging into the work of those historical figures previously mentioned. It will also dive into the Great Leap Forward premise that examines how human intelligence was able to evolve quicker than any other being to exist on this planet.

Other members of Sigma Force, such as Joe Kowalski and Monk Kokkalis, are involved in other parts of this drama. Kowalski's story is most interesting because it depicts modern-day China and experiments at their Great Zoo that involve super-intelligent simians. It is in this storyline that we are introduced to the amazing ape named Baako, who dominates every scene they are in. You can truly see Rollins’ experience as a veterinarian in this storyline.

Where Rollins fills in the gaps with fiction is what makes THE BONE LABYRINTH so interesting. You will question the numerical makeup of human DNA as well as wonder what actually happened to Atlantis and what occurred during the two-minute blackout during Neil Armstrong's moon landing. The wildest thing proposed is how the bones of Adam and Eve allegedly speak to a higher race of beings called Watchers who once controlled what happened on the planet and beyond. Fans of Douglas Adams’ THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY will be pleasantly surprised to learn that the answer to “life, the universe and everything” is not the number 42 but rather 37.

By the end of the novel, readers will be too busy buzzing with excitement about all they have digested to realize what a literary feat Rollins has accomplished by keeping all these balls in the air without dropping a single one.