The Secret Supper
by Javier Sierra
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Book Reviews of The Secret Supper
Book Review: A True Dud
Summary: 1 Stars
This was dreadful fiction, a weak mystery, a boring thriller. There's no sense of the period; the characterizations are paper-thin; the pacing is poor. And then central concept is ludicrous: Leonardo hides a huge secret in The Last Supper and then brags about it to his assistant? I had to re-read that chapter to figure out what the author was up to, though perhaps some of the book's problems are the fault of the translation because there's much too much bad English here. More annoying still, there's a major clue which is easy to figure out, if you're moderately literate, many chapters before the solution is presented. This feels like a Da Vinci Code knock-off and that book has much more brio and audacity, which means that despite its flaws, it's page-turning fun. I turned these pages, yes, but mostly out of morbid curiosity--could it really be this bad? Save your money!Book Review: Interesting read
Summary: 4 Stars
I found this book to be a rather intriguing read. While it seems that reviewers on Amazon either love it or hate it, I suspect that this may be due to several factors:
1. It's not the easiest book to follow due to the large number of characters and their "foreign" (mostly Italian) names. I found myself having to read and reread much of the material just to keep take of the characters.
2. The book was originally written in Spanish. My gut feeling is that the person(s) who translated this novel into English may not have done justice to the book.
3. The topic of the book; itself, requires a certain amount of background knowledge prior to reading it. If this is the case, some may have found it to be dry and boring.
Personally, I found the book quite interesting - especially once I got into the story.
Book Review: People you need to know first.....
Summary: 3 Stars
If you don't already have some familiarity with the Borgia family, Duke Ludovico (Il Moro), Savonarola, the d'Este family to name a few, you will really be lost and much of the gist of the book with be missed. I love history/hist. fiction and have a fair understanding of all those and more and I still felt confused at times. So many huge people with huge historical impacts are merely mentioned in passing that if you don't already know what it means, for instance, that Savonarola criticized the Borgia Pope, well, you'll be even more lost. Lots of names thrown at you fast. Great story but hard to keep straight. Characters so vast and underdeveloped it's hard to care. If you already know and care about this time period, you can plod through and be glad you read it. I was. I was also glad it was over, though.Book Review: Interesting take on art, religion, politics of the time
Summary: 5 Stars
Sometimes the hype of a book can do it harm - you expect too much - ok it is a best seller in Europe, it deals with the magical mysteries a la The DaVinci Code, and it is firmly set in one of the most interesting times of Italian Renaissance, the Borgia papacy. OK. It is a fascinating book that entertains and makes you think. As DaVinci Code did, you have to observe Leonardo's The Last Supper, and understand this is not just a painting, but a message for believers. But who the believers are is a key. Part of the answer is the Borgia Papacy - Alexander VI was one of the most corrupt Popes - so the theory that a pope is Christ's representative on earth comes into play - And the purest sense of faith, and the descendants of that faith.
Really interesting read. This is a book worthy of the hype.
Book Review: Not exactly the Da Vinci code
Summary: 4 Stars
... but perhaps an extention of the same line of thinking. This novel is more realistic and probably better grounded than Dan Brown's opus. It takes us through a bit of a thrill ride with murders, suspense and puzzles in a now familiar path.
The first few chapters are not the smoothest stylistically, and I kept wondering what it would been like in the original Spanish, but somewhere around the third chapter, things start to kick in and the plot takes over.
While I always thought that Brown was taking me for a joy-ride, I became convinced that Sierra actually was drawing on some historical foundation for his interpretation of the Last Supper. His depiction of Leonardo was particularly persuasive.
A good summer read.