Customer Reviews

A God in Ruins

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(17)
1 star:		(127)

 

 

I'm a long time fan of Leon Uris and was excited to begin another of his novels. I have been greatly influenced by his previous works- to the extent that after reading "Battlecry" at the age of 18 I enlisted in the Marine Corps and served for 20 years.

I am distressed to report that this novel is poorly researched, poorly edited and profoundly ideological.

The book is replete with anahronism. One of the secondary characters, a Marine Major General, is supposedly a WWII vet still on active duty in the 21st century. Can't happen, wouldn't happen, didn't happen. Uris describes a former Marine Major who served on active duty from 1978-1986 as a Viet Nam vet. Umm, I was on active duty from 1976 to 1996, the US was out of the war three years before I enlisted. Quinn O'Connell rose to the non-existent rank of Master Technical Sergeant in a five year career? Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy.

Uris' attempt at the techno thriller genre would embarass even the least talented Tom Clancy wannabe's. His description of the equipment, tactics and weapons used on the fictional raid into Iran strain the loosest credibility. Nor does he provide believable justification for this goofy mission. How exactly does freeing an Iranian criminal/dissident exact revenge for a terrorist bombing? It's obvious that the only reason for this little plot line is to provide an opportunity to ascribe heroic actions to O'Connell.

Uris' description of the thinly disguised surrogate for the NRA, AMERIGUN, is directlty drawn from the rantings of the farthest left opponents to the Second Amendment. His efforts result in laughable caricatures of any prominent opponents to his point of view.

Most distressing is the shift in the quality of writing about half way through the book. The story starts as vintage Uris with the epic sweep and characterization that made his previous work so enjoyable. When the story moves into present times the writing become less clear, less concise and .....just less good, in fact, not good at all.

Avoid this book at all costs. I only gave it one star because I had no lower choice.

I love Leon Uris. I've read all his books and several have had specific influences on my life. Therefore, I was very excited when I learned of A God in Ruins and I preordered immediately. I am only 86 pages in but was compelled to do this review to register my shock at the poor editing job done by Harper Collins. Snyder and Camp never played for the Brooklyn Dodgers, Snider and Campy (Campanella) did. Columbia Law School has no basketball team. No grad schools do. Columbia University (undergraduate) issues no athletic scholarships. The most egregious error, however, is that the list of the authors previous works is inaccurate. Uris never wrote a book entitled Milta Pass. He did, in fact, write a fine book years ago, Mitla Pass. How sad. Heads should roll. I'm almost afraid to read on to see what other errors mar this work.

I was shocked at the lack of continuitiy in story-line and generally poor writing. My husband was reading another Uris book concurrently and I kept asking him what he thought of Uris writing style. My husband said A-. I began to think either I was crazy or my husband was, but since I have been reading other reviews of A God In Ruins, I realize we are both right. Something bad happened to Mr Uris at the time he wrote this book...but what? It is not a fair representation of his talent and I am befuddled enough to take time to write this review. God in Ruins is a definite 'don't read.' Read something else like The Haj or Exodus. I think his family should take this one out of circulation. God bless and rest Mr. Uris soul!

...I checked this audiotape out at the library. But I do a lot of purchasing here and I also rely heavily on Amazon.com customer reviews in making my book purchasing choices. Unfortunately, somehow I didn't consult them when selecting Ruins. Man I sure should have. After listening to Ruins, I honestly felt betrayed. I haven't anything new to add that hasn't already been covered in the other reviews. I would like to offer a challenge though. I challenge anyone to find a book from an author as great as Leon Uris that is as bad as this one. I grew up on Leon Uris. He is the reason I became a historical fiction devotee. For that I will forgive him (maybe not his editor), and I can only hope we will see a return to the writing standard of his previous works.

I had the good fortune of reading all of the bad reviews before picking up this book. My expectations were thus quite low. I agree with the other readers on many points: the book was very poorly edited (i.e. reference to eastern time zone being three hours behind the pacific time zone, reference to one of the main character's children having to be rescued twice from the flower-child land of Height Ashbury when such kids weren't even born until the late 70's), the story line was all over the lot, the characters were often caricatures of themselves, Uris' political views were rammed down the readers' throats, and the plentiful representations of the Clintons as misunderstood and victims of the media was just plain laughable. HOWEVER, even with all of these problems, I still could not put down the book once I got to page 200. While certainly not even close in quality to Uris' other books, I still found God in Ruins to be entertaining and a nice escape. It is certainly no worse than the tripe offered by many of today's fiction writers.

I think Mr. Uris needs to find whoever used his name when writing this book and publicly flog them. I can't believe that the same person who wrote Trinity and QBVII wrote this drivel. The plot is poor, the characters are ill-defined and the pacing is absolutely horrendous. The book leaps from the past to the future and back and often times left me wondering what era am I reading about? I think I'm going to bury this book in my garden as it should serve well as a load of manure.

Because someone has apparently kidnapped Leon Uris!

This book is so bad, I don't even know where to start. The characters are one-dimensional, the plot is a hodge-podge of what appear to be Uris' pet peeves, the editing and factual errors were both irritating and shocking for such an accomplished author, the dialog was implausible, and the sychophantic fawning over Bill Clinton really was sickening -- "the agony that befell Bill and Hillary Clinton"??? Oh, puleeeze.

As for his take on the Second Amendment, all I kept thinking was how odd that the same man who had written so eloquently about the Irish struggle for freedom --- the ARMED struggle for freedom, by the way -- had suddenly become so cavalier about American freedoms. What in the world would Conor Larkin say?

Don't waste your time reading this tripe. In fact, plant a tree tomorrow to replace those that were sacrificed to print "A God In Ruins". You'll feel better.

Halfway through this book I finally got fed up. I came to this site on-line to read the reviews to see if I was the only one who couldn't believe Leon Uris wrote this book.

I loved Leon Uris' earier books, in part because I thought I was learning something. But now I have this question: If he wrote such over-the -top tripe about the American scene, was he equally inaccurate about the other cultures dipicted in his earier works.

I've been an admirer of Uris from the time I read Battle Cry while I was in the Marines. This latest book is a far cry from Battle Cry. I'm about half-way through and just got to the part where he begins praising the "slickster" and doing a job on the NRA -- and I mean a one-sided trashing of the organization. All Democrats are good and all Republicans are bad. Leon, my erstwhile friend, you've lost me. Your mind has opened up so much that your brain has fallen out. I'll finish this one, for the purpose of discipline only, then you and I are through. Wish I'd have read the reviews before spending my money on the hardcover version.

I also thought that maybe my tastes had become more sophisticated since reading Exodus and Mr. Uris's other works, which I loved. I'm relieved to see I'm not alone in thinking that this book is really bad. The writing is especially poor. The publishers should really take it off the shelves and let us remember Leon Uris for Exodus, Trinity and his other fine works.