Customer Reviews

Council

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4 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(2)

 

 

If this book, and perhaps the sequel, were put together, with a lot less of the author's message in the thoughts of the characters -- it would be a great book!
I wanted the author to get to the point! I wanted action! Great premise, great promise, needed follow-through.

Given his eye for detail, obviously thorough research, ability to write reasonably well, and obvious commitment as a devout Catholic, this book should be a good read. It isn't. Instead, it is an unfocused mess. It even has digressions that repeat themselves without any intervening material. Did this writer never pass his work beneath the eyes of an editor? If he did, was that editor someone for whom English was a second language? Given the great problems with this book, how does it rise so far in the book distribution world? It's as if a gifted High School student, mentored by a teacher so bemused by the fact that his student knows the difference between a sentence and a paragraph that he fails to notice his student's lack of compositional organization, has suddenly had his second-semester term paper marketed by a bunch of grownups who should know better. It seems to be a trend in the publishing world, but it doesn't change anything: this book does not even rise to the designation of second rate. I am sorry about that, too, because I want to like this book and this author and to buy the other members of the Trilogy. But I cannot. This book is just not worth the money.

I anxiously awaited the arrival of this book, which is the sequel to Conclave. I felt that the book was very intersting. I felt the calling of a new council was interesting and I also learned a couple of things. I felt that the characters were very interesting. I just love Greg Tobin's writing style. I couldn't put the book down at all. I like the little tibits and the different personalitys that each characater had and I think that is what makes the book very interesting. I would recommend this book to anyone that is interesting to learning what it takes to call a council with all the world's cardinals and bishops.

Even the best papal potboilers are cliché ridden: The "black horse" who is elected through the intervention of the Holy Spirit, and who's threatened by an assassination or grave illness; the wise and wily Secretary of State; the evil member of a right wing Roman Catholic organization modeled on Opus Dei; the priest with a crisis of conscience - usually in the area of celibacy; the astute journalist looking for God through a story, who may or may not be the lapsed Catholic being drawn back to the fold. Greg Tobin gave us the clichés in "Conclave," which was not great, but at least readable, and he repeats them all to less effect in "Council." Mr. Tobins' characters just don't rise above cliché, and regardless of the author's efforts to fill in with back-story, they're one dimensional throughout. But characters are only part of the problem with this book. The plot is telegraphed, the sex scenes are awful, trivial incidents are over elaborated, and attempts at weaving memory with "real time" stop rather than illuminate action or character.

The author does have a few ideas about the politics of putting a "Vatican III," together, and about how the event might turn out, but even these portions of "Council," are not adequately developed.

The book begins with the incidents of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, and though those events help define one of his characters the novel seems to suffer from an opening that was opportunistically tacked in; or a book that was only a year in the writing and opportunistically published as close to the year anniversary of 9/11 as possible. If the former, then shame for writing a bad book and merchandising it around the horror of 9/11; if the latter, shame anyway for a rush job that`s barely readable.

"Council," also seems like book two of a series - perhaps a trilogy - and leaves events unresolved for the next installment. I am a sucker for papal potboilers, so I'll probably read a third installment, used or remaindered, but in the meantime I'll say three Hail Mary's in the hope that book three ("Conciliation"?) doesn't repeat the purgatory of "Council."