I originally bought this book back in 2014 after my mother broke her hip (the first time) and had lots of reading time. She said she didn't like it. I don't know if she really disliked it or whether she disliked it on principle because I gave it to her. She seemed to relish criticizing things I liked.
The Amber Room was one of the books in the house that I listed here. I've read all of the books except for the science ones (Unveiling the Edge of Time Black Holes, White Holes, Wormholes; Cosmic Coincidences Dark Matter, Mankind, and Anthropic Cosmology; The Elegant Universe super strings, hidden dimensions and the quest for the ultimate theory) and The Sagas of Icelanders.
Despite a strong prologue, it seemed to take a while for The Amber Room to get going. (Looking back, it's only about 40 pages.) It seemed longer because I didn't care about the divorce of Rachel and Paul Cutler and the threat to Rachel's judgeship (which ends up being a non-issue by the end of the book.) Once things started rolling, I got into the story and finished the book in about five days.
The Amber Room is real and the mysteries surrounding it are fascinating. Author Steve Berry traveled through Germany, Austria and Moscow and St. Petersburg in Russia to research this novel. Berry has written over 20 books and travels extensively to research them. In fact, Berry rewrote sections of The Amber Room after spending time with the chief restorer of the Amber Room; he realized he had gotten many details wrong.
On to the critique. While I enjoyed the story, there were a few times I noticed the writing. It's hard to describe--the word choices seemed forced or designed to impress. There were several instances where it was unclear which character was speaking--a few more dialogue tags would have been helpful
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