Blasphemy
by Douglas Preston
|
List Price: Our Price: $0.01 You Save: $25.94 (100%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Blasphemy
Book Review: Preston Takes on Fundamentalism in this Provocative Thriller
Summary: 4 Stars
I read a lot of thrillers, and I think Douglas Preston is one of the best writers in the genre. His best known work is the highly successful "Agent Pendergast" series, which he has been writing with Lincoln Child since 1995. There are currently eight novels in this series, and they're a bit like Michael Crichton mixed with Clive Cussler: a highly entertaining blend of action, adventure, history, and science.
Preston also writes science-based thrillers on his own, and has produced a rough trilogy of sorts: THE CODEX, TYRANNOSAUR CANYON, and now BLASPHEMY. These novels are all separate stories, and can be read in any order, but feature some of the same characters.
BLASPHEMY is easily the most controversial novel that Preston has written. In this book, he tackles the whole "Science v. Religion" debate, and he doesn't hesitate to make some severe criticisms of religious fundamentalism. If you're a fan of novels such as LEFT BEHIND, you will probably find much in this novel to dislike.
The novel takes place in the Arizona desert, where a powerful particle accelerator has been constructed. A team of scientists are trying to use the supercollider to reconstruct the conditions that caused the "Big Bang" phenomenon which allegedly created the Universe as we know it. Something has gone wrong with the project, and former CIA agent Wyman Ford (from TYRANNOSAUR CANYON) is sent to do an undercover investigation.
Before long, Ford learns that the supercollider has opened up a window to an artificial intelligence of some kind. This AI claims to be the voice of God, and the team realizes it may be on the verge of the greatest scientific discovery of all time.
In the meantime, a corrupt TV evangelist and a high powered corporate lobbyist learn about the supercollider, and manipulate some dim-witted evangelical Christians to protest the project. Unfortunately, the manipulation spins out of control, and a mob of homicidal evangelicals convince themselves that the supercollider is the work of the anti-Christ. They descend upon the supercollider project with murderous intent, killing anybody on site who refuses to convert to their religion.
Overall, I found BLASPHEMY an exciting read. Preston is a very skilled writer of prose (he reportedly does most of the actual writing for the Pendergast books), and he knows how to construct an intelligent, entertaining page turner. This book starts slowly, but it has an exciting finale.
The major flaw with BLASPHEMY, however, is that Preston is a much better at plot than characterization. Most of the characters in this book merely exist to push the plot forward, and have little depth or personality. Preston writes in very short chapters, and likes to switch points of view constantly, and I felt this prevented me from really getting to know any of the characters.
The main character of Wyman Ford, for example, is earnest enough, but is rather a bland hero, and his romantic interest is even less interesting. Most of the members of the scientific team are rather sketchy and underdeveloped, with the exception of their charismatic leader Gregory Hazelius.
Furthermore, all of the evangelical Christian characters in this novel are quite cartoonish and lack any complexity or nuance. The televangelist character, Don T. Spates, is an absolute toad of a human being, a shyster who sleeps with prostitutes and takes money under the table. The other main religious character, Pastor Russ Eddy, is a true believer, but is portrayed as a simple-minded person who uses religion as a crutch to escape his own failures as a human being.
The major theme of this book is that far-right religious fundamentalism is dangerous, and can lead to murderous violence. While this is a legitimate point, I think Preston is ultimately too one-sided and heavy-handed in his criticisms. Of course, you can make the same criticism about the LEFT BEHIND novels, so I suppose turnabout is fair play.
Overall, however, I think BLASPHEMY is an entertaining, thought-provoking read. I also loved the ending, which is delightfully cynical. While this book probably isn't going to change anyone's minds, I give Preston credit for tacking some big issues with this novel.
Book Review: Great read, oddly riveting for a book on particles, too stereotyped
Summary: 3 Stars
Other people have said it: it's a good read, with lazy stereotypes in place of good character development, and simplistic science. It was a fun read, with weird little thorny things that stuck out and clung after the book was done, but in all it was certainly way more entertaining (even before "GOD" showed up) than I would have expected a book on a particle accelerator to be. Read it, especially if you need a good distraction, but don't expect it to be great. (Oh, and did anybody else catch that quote the editors snuck in from Lincoln Child - Preston's other literary half - as if he were some random author who wrote a review? Made me giggle.)
The stereotype of the televangelist I can give a pass on - those people really do seem to make themselves into stereotypes! It's just crazy how many of them seem to end up being caught in compromising situations with women, men, or children, so I can actually buy that one. But when every Christian was portrayed as somewhere on the crazy-greedy-evil spectrum, and only the Navajo medicine man was respectably spiritual, well that's just lazy and worthy of literary contempt.
I was particularly disapointed in Eddie, the missionary who went off the deep end and became convinced the head scientist was the Anti-Christ and the End Was Now. I understand that he had a literary role to play, to push forward the action as an antagonist, but he could have been such a nuanced sympathetic antagonist, instead of which he became a cartoon. Eddie was an all-over loser (high voice, weird stunted figure, divorced without access to his 2 kids, impoverished mission church with opportunistic church-goers looking for handouts of clothes, ashamed to have to beg for gas money to make it week to week), who still chose a difficult life of poverty trying to help others. He was basically a good guy, doing the best he could with his own limitations. When he got into a defensive tussle with the local PTSD-haunted drunk parolee, and the boy's knife ended up in his own heart by accident, that was the point that he could have taken some serious looks at his own life and found a more nuanced view. I guess my sympathies were engaged with him enough by then that it bothered me that he went off the deep end, spouting Revelations (always a bad sign) and skulking around the scientific test site in the dark to try to catch secrets and plots. Sigh.
For examples of other stereotypes, the K-street lobbyist really - I swear - used terms in his head like "Chinamen" and "darkies"... um, right. Being racist isn't that big a stretch for someone working in D.C.'s political scene - but if he was really going to use racist terms in his head, those words would have started with Ch- and Ni- respectively. Darkies??!! One thing I have to admit though, Preston did capture the wheeling-dealing lobbying world, where a fired consultant manufactured a scandal to plague his own former clients to make them come back begging him to fix the problem.
Oh, and just totally as a rant (I can't help but point this out!), when Eddie wrote an email trying to use numerology (gematria) to show how the test site in Arizona was actually Armageddon, his Hebrew was off. For instance, he said that he letter for the "z" in Arizona was the Hebrew letter "Shin" which in reality makes a "sh" sound (Arishona??) - but the "z" sound in Hebrew is made by the letter "Zayin" (which of course has a totally different number count: 7 versus 300 - a huge difference!)... maybe if you wanted to stretch it you could use a "Tsadi" which makes the "ts" sound, but no way would any reasonable person use "Shin". Then again, I have read plenty of religious literature that tries to get the end result it wants and manipulates the inputs - and gematria itself has a long and glorious history of manipulating the inputs in search of desired outputs. Religious scholars, yikes. Although shoe-horning the world to fit one's preconceptions is certainly not a habit of only the religious, it seems to be something we all struggle with.
Ok, I've gone off enough. Read it, enjoy it, but get it from the library or discount rack.
Book Review: "Perhaps no rational, intelligent person can ever be absolutely sure of his faith. Or in my case, sure of my lack of faith."
Summary: 4 Stars
Douglas Preston is probably best known for the series of highly successful novels he has co-authored with Lincoln Child, the most recent of which was the bestseller THE WHEEL OF DARKNESS. Preston also has found success as a solo author of both fiction and nonfiction books, and is a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. With his latest effort, BLASPHEMY, he may be taking on the most controversial topic he has ever written about: science vs. religion.
I always look forward to anything Preston is involved with writing because I know the topics will be diverse and intricately researched, and I usually come away learning something in the process. BLASPHEMY is no exception. Its plot revolves around the controversy created by the most expensive machine ever assembled --- Isabella, a supercollider hidden deep in Red Mesa, Arizona, that is probing the causes of the Big Bang. Great concern has arisen over Isabella, both from the U.S. government and several religious groups. Wyman Ford, ex-monk and CIA operative, has been sent undercover to join the team of scientists in Red Mesa in an effort to report on what is going on there and learn about any issues that the team may be covering up.
The leader of the Isabella scientific team is former Nobel Laureate, and self-proclaimed "world's smartest man," William North Hazelius. Directly opposing Hazelius is powerful television evangelist Reverend Don T. Spates, who claims that Hazelius and the Isabella team is involved in a satanic attempt at disproving Genesis and challenging God Almighty. Assisting Reverend Spates is a fanatical follower, Reverend Eddy, who is housed just outside of Red Mesa and working on uncovering the secrets that the Isabella team is hiding. Members of the U.S. religious right fear that the Isabella scientists are promoting an anti-Christian agenda that they feel pervades the entire nation.
Wyman is thrown right into the middle of this storm. As a former monk he has deeply rooted religious beliefs of his own while also maintaining a scientific perspective for the work that the Isabella team is doing. To further complicate things for Ford, his ex-lover, Kate Mercer, is the Assistant Deputy Director to Hazelius, and Wyman finds himself falling for her again.
As things begin to heat up on the religious front, the Isabella team comes across what they feel is a "hacker" who has broken into their system and is beginning to communicate with the team under the guise of being "God." Once Reverend Eddy uncovers some of the Isabella team's secrets and reports them to Reverend Spate, in addition to posting them on every religious website he can, an uprising begins that draws thousands of angry people to Red Mesa in an attempt to thwart what they see as "Armageddon."
To tell more would give away too much. Suffice it to say that, as the Isabella team is distracted by their dialogue with "God," the conflagration that is building outside of their deeply hidden encampment is reaching epic proportions that will bring about tragic results. Overall, BLASPHEMY is a fast and thrilling read that tackles deep scientific reasoning while displaying some of the prevailing religious sentiments in the nation today. It is quite contrary to novels like the Left Behind series and goes to great lengths to show that scientific discoveries in the wrong hands can be a dangerous thing. Hazelius sums up the scientific perspective best when he states: "Perhaps no rational, intelligent person can ever be absolutely sure of his faith. Or in my case, sure of my lack of faith."
I truly enjoyed BLASPHEMY and turned the pages in great anticipation of the inevitable tragic confrontation when science and religion, polar opposites, meet head on. My only criticism is that I would have liked to have seen more direct debate between Hazelius and Reverend Eddy, and I felt that some of the characters in the conflagration were dispatched of too quickly. Even though the subject matter is quite sensitive, Preston does a great job showing all sides and has put together a compelling and intriguing read.
--- Reviewed by Ray Palen
Book Review: Meh....
Summary: 2 Stars
I got this book from the local library which is about the most positive thing I have to say, as it means I didn't buy it. Actually, beyond that one thing that I will say positive...Preston CAN write well. His prose, while nothing fancy, is pleasant and easy to read. During the first third of the book, I thought it had a potentially interesting premise (involving what happens when a supercolliding superconducter is used to recreate events similar to those during the Big Bang). Sure, the characters were a bit carbon-copied from the ditto-book of stereotypes:
1.) Tall, handsome ex-CIA dude, militarily skilled and insightful? [[Check]].
2.) Beautiful, mysterious ex-lover of said ex-CIA protagonist to rekindle old flame? [[Check]].
3.) A group of quirky, geeky, and socially stunted scientists? [[Check]].
4.) Psychologist who is not accepted by the "real" scientists (not that they necessarily should) and who is secretly insecure about this? [[Check]].
5.) Christians who either murderers, nut-bags, or closet pedophiles? [[Check]].
Still, the book's basic premise...that creating a singularity might somehow communicate with "higher" beings...was interesting if not terribly original. In fact in first part of the book, I was mainly dismayed that the romantic sub-plot between the main character Wylan Ford and his ex-girlfriend was so obvious and overdone that watching it was going to be painful (as indeed it ultimately was).
By the middle third of the book, it began to feel like a train going off the rails. First, the Christianity thing. I generally consider myself neutral in the whole culture war between the "hard core" Christians and secularists/atheists (I consider myself a pretty mild-mannered Episcopalian for the record)...but this rant on Christianity was more embarassing to the author than anything else. Having Christian fundamentalists as unwitting villains could have been interesting...but sure enough all the Christian fundamentalists have MAJOR skeletons in their closets. To be a "true believer" of course requires insanity, but that's not enough as one must be a murderer as well. The only alternative is the be a cynical, greedy, fraud who sodomizes prostitutes and lusts after young boys on the side (I kid you not). Sheesh...did we miss ANY stereotypes about Christian fundamentalists in this book? Don't forget to mention they're from the South and that they believe Catholics aren't real Christians. <shakes head>
Part of the finale of the books requires random Christian fundamentalists from all over the West to converge (avoiding road blocks) on a particular remote location and storm a government facility, all while the National Guard and the US military seems unable to get out of bed. Sooooo....a bunch of hayseed hicks who've never met before can mobilize into an army in a matter of minutes, and the US Army...IN THE US...can't mobilize to head them off for a day or more. Unfortunately the book is filled with plot holes like this one.
The basic premise of the book begins to fall apart. Discussions between the scientists and the entity they "conjure" up become increasingly silly. In essence, the "entity" offers up a buch of silly New Age philosophies of science and religion that become increasingly inane (at least one of the characters notices it too, which rescues the book a little). Basically it all boiled down to...everything humans think is wrong, humans are too dumb to know what's really going on, so why bother explaining, I'm not going to offer you much of anything in return, buuuuut...hey why don't you worship me for awhile? Oddly enough the entity says the Big Bang theory is all wrong, but then goes on to worry about the heat death of the universe as true which (as I recollect) is itself based in Big Bang theory.
Ultimately this book comes from the same kind of intellectual reasoning as brought you the DaVinci Code. Some snappy writing, action-packed plot, but not much brains.
Book Review: Once too often
Summary: 1 Stars
Folks,
I think this is a very poor book, and it, along with Child's Utopia, has convinced me never to buy another book by either author.
To begin, I should describe my "philosophy" about thrillers. Many people seem to think that books in this category should simply get a pass from criticism, because, after all, they are just "airplane books" I disagree; I think there are good thrillers and bad ones and that the difference matters, given the fact we buy them with hard earned cash. A bad thriller is one with a plot that is so full of gaps and inconsistences and/or is so implausible as simply to be uninteresting. Every thriller requires readers to suspend disbelief, and we want to. But, the author has to make this process possible. He's got to have enough art to connect the plot just enough with reality to permit a reader to jump in. A bad thriller also is one without notable characters. To be good, a thriller has to have great characters unless it has an unusually enthralling plot. A fascinating, gnarly set of characters can make up for below average writing and a below average plot. Given Preston and Child's own creation, Pendergast, you would think both of them would really understand that. Preston, at least, doesn't any more.
Blasphemy totally fails on both plot and charcter. It is hard to go further without giving away too much. But, if you've read some of the other reviews, you've got a pretty idea what the book is about. I am firmly on the side of those who describe the plot as simply so implausible, overwrought, melodramatic, and just plain silly as to be more consistent with a romance novel than a thriller. It's also flat-out dumb in so many ways. I'll just mention one. Here you have God choosing to reveal Himself through a computer monitor and a computer-generated voice to 6 or 8 scientists operating a particle accelerator. God describes what the Truth is over maybe 30 minutes of conversation, and what He reveals is a laughable mix of New Age aphorisms and pseudo-science, e.g. "The universe is a unity. We are all connected." This revelation is greeted with jaw-dropping wonder and amazement by the scientists, helped by a couple of parlor tricks God is able to perform. The Amazing Randi would crack these stunts in a New York minute, by the way, but these scientists are totally credulous and become completely converted to this "new religion," as God calls it. Since the chapters in this book average about 2 to 4 pages quick cutting between different settings, there are no characters particularly. There are individuals with names, but they are as flat as theater scenary. I figure, altogher, we see and hear the protagonist in this book, Ford, for maybe an hour of book time. Same for all the characters. What is there to connect to?
You know, folks, at some point, this sort of thing gets just too much to stomach. Pretty clearly, this author and his editors have come to believe that we are easier to entertain than a bunch of three-year olds. As with so many authors of earlier thrillers that were good, Preston (and Childs) almost certainly has multi-book deals with pretty strict deadlines. So this is all about thinking and writing at high-speed to take advantage to cash in on our enjoyment of Preston's earlier stuff.
Speaking for myself, I think Preston (and Childs) has exploited, once too often, my hope that his current books will be in the same league as his earlier ones. Mr. Preston, that's it for me.