Book Recommendation: The Hidden Truth Series by Hans G. Schantz
A thrilling adventure that just keeps getting better and better!
I don’t know about you, but I love going into a new book knowing as little as possible. I love to be surprised when I read a book. But that poses a problem for me and my reading habits. It means the majority of books I start often are disappointing because I don’t know much about them. So I’ve tended to mostly read things based on the recommendations of other people whose tastes or sensibilities I trust. This has helped me a bit in discovering the diamonds in the rough.
That’s how I’m approaching my book recommendations. These are not reviews, and I’m not going to get very in-depth about the content of the books. In fact, I’m going to do the opposite. I will begin with very little: a short synopsis and my general feelings about the book. I’ll then leave some space and include a little more (but no major spoilers) for those who might need a little more convincing.
Several years ago I received a message on Twitter (when it was still called Twitter) from someone who told me they were surprised to find someone else who had written an alternate history with a President Al Gore. Curious, I checked out his book to see what he did with the premise, and I shortly thereafter devoured the entire trilogy.
This book series is very different than mine. The President Al Gore in this series is simply a detail of the alternate history world of the book, not a character. The book is a thriller where two teenage boys stumble upon a discrepancy in what should be identical copies of old science textbooks. They begin to investigate this curious anomaly and inadvertently stumble into a much bigger conspiracy than they could have possibly imagined.
That is all I want to leave you with. I think the surprises in store for you are well worth the investment in The Hidden Truth. It truly is a thrill ride of a book (and a series), and I wholeheartedly recommend it. If you need a little more, my recommendation will continue further down.
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Okay, a little bit more. I will be honest, it was not until about halfway through the first book that I was ultimately hooked. Up until that point, I thought I was reading a fairly innocuous light read about some high school students finding a mystery and exploring it. It almost had the tone of a middle school mystery book, the kind that would focus on a smarter-than-average kid and revolve around a fairly benign mystery safe enough for young children to read.
It was not until about the midway point that the bottom falls out from under the two boys, and you (and the characters) realize that the stakes and the consequences of their mystery go way beyond a missing sentence in a textbook. That was the moment I was hooked. You’ll know it when you hit it. I encourage you to just let the slow burn at the beginning get you there. It is well worth it.
Perhaps a little bit more about the setting. As I mentioned, in the history of this story, there was a President Al Gore instead of George W. Bush. And also in the history of this book, the 9/11 attacks hit the White House instead of the Pentagon, killing the president. Then President Joe Lieberman enacted a slightly different version of the Patriot Acts which brought internet communication under the control of the US Government. There is an internet search giant (the equivalent of our timeline’s Google) that is regulated more heavily by the government and includes more government surveillance of internet activity than our timeline (maybe). This seems like a fairly inconsequential difference, but it does have impactful implications as the books progress.
I also, want to take a second a describe what I liked most about the sequels to The Hidden Truth: A Rambling Wreck and The Brave and the Bold. I’m not going to reveal any spoilers, but I think you’ll want to read these once you get started.
I love it when you have competent characters making competent decisions that completely make sense in the moment of the action. Don’t you hate it (like in a horror movie) where the main character keeps making dumb decisions? (Why don’t you just call the police?! No, don’t open the door!!!) In The Hidden Truth books, the solutions the main characters come up with all seem reasonable. Perhaps more than reasonable, they seem very well thought out. But then in the sequels, those reasonable decisions and actions are turned on their heads, not because the characters were incompetent or made bad decisions, but because they simply did not understand the full scope of what they were dealing with.
The sequels turn the previous book on their heads without making the reader feel cheated. The threats and the thrills in these books just keep growing and growing in a way that doesn’t seem forced or hackneyed. You feel like you’re discovering just how deep this threat goes right along with the characters. And as a result, you just keep getting pulled into the story more and more. I highly recommend this awesome trilogy of books.
Hans also has a few Substacks you might want to check out related to some of his other more recent writing projects: