Customer Reviews

In The Name of God

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I've actually only read the two sections available online, and thus my review is not the best-informed. However. . .

I liked the book, but not as a book per se. I thought that it was wonderful in its comments on religion and on the personal traits of televangelists. Likewise, its themes supporting science and literacy are admirable.

I also liked the writing, which I thought was very clean, very lucid, though not the most memorable.

However, I thought that the characters were very shallow, almost cariacatures. I also thought that the exaggeration in the setting was really too much, in a sense. It came across as rather prejudiced, the sheer evil of the acts commited by President Baker.

On the other hand, fundamentalists are capable of astounding beliefs and hypocrisy, but this goes back to the problems with characterization by making the characters unrealistic.

Yet the characters are not the important thing here. The important parts to me are the the culture and the imagery of the angelic figures revolting against the image of God. The ideas in this book are what make it interesting, and while they aren't entirely original (Harlan Ellison and Ray Bradbury captured different parts of this picture, and Isaac Asimov used nearly the same society in one story,) no other book that I've seen reveals the anatomy of a religious takeover so completely.

(And I love his choice of BGM. John Lennon!)

Wow! I wish my writing had the same high levels of efficiency, wit, irony, intensity, profundity, and unity as the writing in this book. "In the Name of God" is destined to be a classic in the realm of freethought fiction. It's a futuristic sci-fi adventure, a love story, an artistic and philosophical statement, and an all-too-plausible tale of religious horror--all in one book!

A frightening, 'Prophetic' look into our future. A must read.....for anyone who wants to see what our future 'could be'. Well, done.

Linda Kerr-Iwaniw, Editor-in-Chief, PentDragon Press

I never fancied myself a writer, but now I have confidence that I, my aunt, and my dog can get published if we look hard enough for a po-dunk publisher in the sticks of Pennsylvania. Sure I knew the steel industry was suffering, but has all business sense in that state gone straight to hell as well? I would say yes. If a thousand monkeys each had a typewriter and typed for a thousand years, they would never type this complete insult to paper because even they have the literary understanding and knowledge to realize not only that has this story been written before, but that nobody liked it back then either.

It reads like all the other futuristic novels--except that the Christians are the bad guys.

If it were any more possible to write more shallow than thetwo-dimensional characters that run rampant in this book, I am sureScott Smith can do it.

1 star was the absolute lowest possible rating I could give this book full of stereotypes and character goals that do not go beyond the "How about this?" hypothesis.

Any great writer does not make their antagonist 100 percent evil. This is writing 101. There has to be more to a person than action, there has to be motivation and history, both of which I found to be lacking.