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18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
well researched and written, May 6, 2005
I am astonished at the anger portrayed by several reviewers regarding Douglass' corrupt church in these books. The truth of the matter is that the church WAS corrupt in the fourtheeth century. There WERE three different popes and friars and priests and nuns took their vows of chastiy none to seriously. If you don't believe me go read Chaucer or Boccaccio or Dante. These writers satyrize the very corrupt church and share this disillusionment with most of the western world. This was a time of crisis for Europe in many ways, not just religious. Douglass goes a long way in portraying that. Before the plague people were content with the way the world was ordered out. God had a plan for everyone and as you were born you lived. You could not move out of your class and that was that. But the plague changed that. Sinners and saints died alike with no rhyme or reason and people began to see that perhaps this order wasn't god blessed.
The church couldn't save them and the common idea the one must suffer in life in order to reach heaven in death began to wane. In the fourteenth century that's what the church was. Everyone was born a sinner and so must suffer to repent. These books delve deep into the medieval mind and give a modern reader a glimps into the past.
The line between evil and good is not so easliy defined as people like to think. That's what I love about this book and the following book. Douglass makes you wonder and I've switched my alliances several times. She also did an amazing amout of research to recreate the medieval world very accuratly (except torture wasn't widely used until the spanish inquisition, exile was the most common form of punishment but she has literary license). Read these books with an open mind and you will find that they are amazing. A little slow to start but once you get into the heart of them you find that they have snared you.
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17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Better history than Fiction, July 27, 2004
Sara Douglass has the dubious honor of writing two books that make it into the very slender list of books I'll probably never finish. I couldn't finish this, and I couldn't finish Hades' Daughter.
In both cases the subject material looked fascinating, and I was enthusiastic after reading the dustjacket. In both cases I just couldn't make progress through the book. For the record I've read Threshold and Wayfarer redemption.
I made it a good chunk of the way into this book, and I heartily approve of the history - from my limited knowledge of the period, I'm quite impressed with Ms Douglass' scholarship. The themes appeal to me. Man's inability to tell virtue from vice, the mystery of divinity, the question of why good happens to evil, how to choose between various virtues. There is even the promise of a quite wonderful dilemma for our protagonist.
Alas, there's the rub. The protagonist. Another in the literary tradition of warrior turned monk. He is tormented by visions from angels and demons. A well intentioned sort of fellow who desires to do good, but I have the creepy feeling that his advisors aren't always as "good" as they claim to be. Wonderful setup. If I didn't hate the fellow.
In what I must presume is an attempt to be true to history, he is an obnoxious prick. He has no sympathy or compassion for his fellow man. Even his former friends and fellow friars find him a pain. I can't find evidence that a single other character in the book likes him - which reinforces my suspicion that the "Angels" who are chatting with him are in fact fallen angels.
There's a great deal to be said for starting with such a character - it gives him room to grow in directions that buidl reader sympathy. It is good history. But I have to care more about him sooner, or I'll put down the book.
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13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Major flaws but somehow kept me going, January 14, 2005
The Nameless Day is a difficult book to review as there was so much I didn't like about it. To begin with, the main character is extremely unlikable, which isn't an automatic mark against a book, but when the character stays so consistently unlikable for such a long time, it does get a bit wearying. We see some slight glimpses of a better man here and there more towards the end, but following Thomas Neville through several hundred pages can seem a bit of a chore. Worse for me were the many inconsistencies within the book of plot and character. Just to give one example, at one point Thomas is berated and mocked by a small group for having traipsed around much of Europe due to some visions from St. Michael. Then only a few pages later, the same group listens as Thomas tells them of demons and his visions and they all believe him wholeheartedly because according to the author, they had been trained from birth to do so. The two seem pretty mutually exclusive to me and I still can't reconcile the disparate actions beyond the author's need to have the plot go in certain directions so she has characters act any way necessary. One more example--once this group does wholeheartedly believe in the demons and Thomas' vision, they seem surprisingly passive with regard to them. This sort of inconsistency runs throughout the book and is infuriating in places.
Yet somehow, once I got past the first 100 pages, during which I several times considered just stopping, the book did get hold of me somehow, even though I kept marking its flaws. Part of it was an interest in whether Thomas would grow in character. Another was an interest in the God/Angels vs. Demons and which was good which was bad plot. And to be honest, much, if not even most, was when characters I've always been interested in such as Prince Hal and Hotspur and Richard etc. started to make regular appearance. I can't say if those not in the English teacher-Shakespeare reader mold that I come from would find the book as interesting.
The strengths of the book, besides picking some interesting historical/dramatic characters, are its historical setting/detail and its ability to keep the reader guessing a bit with regard to character motivations, with a lot of unclear or shifting alliances and desires. The weaknesses are the aforementioned inconsistencies, the almost unrelenting negativity of the main character, and some hard to swallow plot points/premises.
I'll read the second book, as it continues to move into a period of history I enjoy, but I hope it's better constructed. As for this one, recommended but barely, with a lot of misgiving.
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