I found this a long and confusing read, there was a lot happening and I'm still uncertain just how much of it was necessary to further the story line.  The book was entertaining but complicated; since I hate reviews which give away the plot, I can only say that the death of the protagonist made me feel that I'd read a long time for little reward.  Lastly, perhaps in an attempt to leave an opening for a sequel, the final chapters present the reader with all manner of possibilities while resolving little regarding the basic premise of alien involvement in human evolution.

Set in a current time period, the book starts off with a predictable main character, loner who lost his family and likes to take chances etc. emotionally damaged but with a heroic streak. Our lead is whisked off by special forces to undertake a secret operation to retrieve something for the American government, he is reunited with a former sort-of flame, British protégé, Victoria.

After successfully retrieving the object, the group are attacked by the Chinese, who also want the artefact, this happens a number of times through the book in a game of artefact tag.

I mostly liked the characters, the story was well written and engaging, I was particularly irritated by Victoria, the British diver/photographer who became an irrational religious zealot when presented with evidence that God may not have created the earth and people after all, I'm British, I don't even know anybody who goes to church anymore, the suggestion that we lose our shit over religion was mildly annoying to me.

The middle of the story seemed a little all over the place, the death of one of the books main features seemed like a bad idea. The entire story hinged on the existence of K'in, then the book ended with little t no knowledge of his species history, zero impact on the world or society as a result of this adventure (unless you count the whole "Ebola" section), plus there were random faction leaders just butting into the story, killing a few people yet not really impacting the story line in a meaningful way.

It was a pleasant read for a few hours but it just felt like it needed more somehow....