In reality, I'd give this a 2.5 star rating but seeing as that isn't possible on this site, I'll round up. My wife and I wanted something fun, light and Mayan related for our ride up to Chichen Itza and in that regard, The Codex was successful. A good central idea, an action heavy plot and cool locations made for a pretty enjoyable listen.

But it was far from perfect. The characters were cardboard cut outs with little to no growth over the course of the novel(not that surprising coming from airport fiction, but still would have liked to have seen SOME attention given to the characters). Also, while the main characters had fine names, some of the secondary characters had some of the most unintentially hilarious names ever - none more then Sally Colorado. Her name was seriously Sally Colorado and every time she introduced herself to a new character - which was pretty often - I chuckled.

About Ms. Colorado, her "relationship" with Tom seemed to be shoehorned in after the fact. Their "sex scene" in the jungle may be the most unappealing ideas I've ever heard: "Hey, I know we have an ex-Green Beret and his small army of mercenaries after us, and we're both sick, covered in sores and slowly dying and my brothers are nearby and we're trying to take care of an infant monkey for some reason but I think we should smash our junks together. What do you say" I have to believe it's inclusion was in response to some editor's note. Since the characters are merely there to make the crackerjack plot move, the sudden declaration of love between Tom and Sally was very jarring. It's not like they had a bunch of tender moments together - or if they did, it was off the page - but suddenly she was swooning over him.

The book also has "Dexter V/O Syndrome" - where our character will tell us thoughts through inner monologue and then immediately verbally express that thought right after. "I wanted to be a paleontologist," Tom tells us a scant few paragraphs before he tells Sally Colorado (ha) "I wanted to be a paleontologist." It's an annoying thing that jumped out when listening to the book. There were a lot of repeated thoughts, words and phrases that just wore on you after a while.

The final major gripe (which my wife constantly pointed out) was, despite the fact that they didn't want the story about their father's wealthy tomb getting out, the main characters didn't seem to have any problem telling complete strangers the entire story. They told everyone, everything always. They couldn't have lied and said they needed help tracking down their father in Honduras and left out the fact about the half a billion dollars worth of art he squirreled away down there? Granted, this wouldn't have made for an exciting novel, but it would have made a hell of a lot more sense.

Overall, The Codex was a fine beach read. It had it's good moments (the trip through the swamps with Don Alfonso stands out)and it had it's bad (Sally Colorado suddenly discovering she is a world class sniper because....well, because it was needed for the story). It's junk food: You love it while you're eating it. It's only after you're done do you stop, look at the ingredients and cringe a little at how unhealthy it is for you.