Customer Reviews

The Rozabal Line

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This is a must have for fans of religious conspiracy thrillers like Dan Brown's best sellers. This book is a much more fast paced thriller than others like it. The novel takes you traveling through human history as the story comes to a climax on December 21st 2012. It is a show down between Islamist terrorists, a corrupt Catholic Church, and the Illuminati. Through out you will learn about many theories about Jesus and Christianity. Like how Rome created Catholicism by turning Jesus into a God and giving him many attributes of Pagan Gods so he would be accepted. (In Koine Greek Kathlicos means universal, that is where the word Catholic comes from). Constantine created a univeral church to unite the empire. You will also see the theory that Jesus survived the cross and traveled to India where he died. The main characters are a Catholic Priest, a new age pychic (his aunt), and a Japanese assasin. What is different about this book is the flashbacks to these characters past lives where their Karma is explained through what they did in past lives. I have never heard of this kind of story line and found it very thought provoking. This is an exiting and thrilling read and you might learn several things as you make your way through to the end. If you are looking for a great conspiracy theory thrill ride, it does not get better than this.

I have just finished reading 'The Roza Bal Line' and smiled through many passages and ideas in the book because they ringed true for me. Although I lived in Kashmir specifically to investigate the claims about the tomb, and although I met often with Muslims who claim they are descended from Yuz Asaf (the name for Jesus in Kashmir) it never occured to me to connect ideas the way Shawn Haigins has in this book. Jesus descendents in the east, where the world least expects them? Jesus descendents as modern day fundamentalists and terrorists? Of course! Why not? Why hadn't I thought of that! Haigins did a terrific job with this fictional account. The world would benefit more if he put his obvious investigative reporting-writing style and energies into writing non-fiction. I did find some historical errors in the book, but I attribute these to the fiction premise and not to any lack of ability on the author's part. He is a lucid thinker and writer, and Roza Bal can definately benefit from his continued contributions on the subject. Thanks Shawn, for an awesome task splendidly accomplished.

The Rozabal Line is a tale of secrets and conspiracies, adventure and romance, power and glory stretching back to the ancient world and forward to the near future. It encompasses many tantalizing elements, any one of which would make for a fascinating novel: revisionist religious history, mysterious organizations which exert their influence over many centuries, modern technological marvels,and modern political/social issues like terrorism. To be his first novel, Shawn Haigins has done a commendable job of tying the many disparate parts together in a cohesive whole. It speaks well for his future as a novelist.

The Rozabal Line refers to a mysterious tomb in India and a bloodline which may, or may not, descend from Jesus Christ. Despite this seeming similarity to a well known novel by Dan Brown, The Rozabal Line manages to outdo its rival by chronicling several different story lines which run parallel through the book, some taking place in the near future (2012) while others date to the first years of the great religions of Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism. There is much to ponder here, as Haigins does a superb job of chronicling many intriguing similarities between the foundation stories of Christianity and other, now extinct, faiths. He provides copious notes directing the interested reader to many books and websites which provide more details for these ideas. (The story can be enjoyed even if the reader does not accept some or all of these claims, by the way.) By the final chapters, Haigins ties the many loose ends up neatly with a satisfying conclusion.

Why not nonfiction? I've seen this statement on several reviews, and after reading the book, I see why. The problem here is execution and format. The subject is certainly suited to fiction - it just happened that a first-time novelist got into material way beyond his skills. The author would have been better off to abandon his cardboard characters and the forced storyline and present the material as nonfiction.

For me, subject matter alone is not enough to sustain the life of a novel. You need memorable characters speaking believable dialogue, moving through descriptive settings and journeys that in the end allow for some inner growth. This is the essence of good fiction. Here, all these essentials have been swept away in the rush to get to the...what? Where and what is the "important message" that hasn't been covered in much more thought-provoking and engaging nonfiction accounts?

If you are interested in the eastern influences of Jesus, there is a wealth of material (though apparently, from some of the reviews, little known). Suzanne Olsson's Jesus in Kashmir, The Lost Tomb is a five-star book that's certainly the seminal account of the Jesus in India theory. But it's much more. Her contributions in this area are nothing short of trail blazing and her account is essential reading for anyone open to alternate theories. But don't stop - there is a shelfful of books as well as whole websites (type in "Jesus in India" and click on one of the 354,000 sites - that's what the author did) centered on the "real" Roza Bal, and the missing years of Jesus and the idea of Jesus surviving crucifixion and spending his remaining years in Kashmir. These are not new ideas!

But, I guess it was only a matter of time before the next Dan Brown wannabe would hijack these ideas and shoehorn them into a meaningless and poorly wrought "narrative." I'm absolutely dumbfounded finding people giving this display of mediocre scholarship five stars. Apparently, the material IS new for some readers, but unfortunately, this complex subject has implications well beyond the understanding of the author, who in the end succumbs to the effects of his own literary miasma and opts for the easy out (the umpteenth version of the Mary Magdalene story).

So, why award more than one star? For scope? The scope is from the beginning of history when Annunaki deposited humankind on our planet - no, wait, I believe he did leave out one New Age theory, and then on to the future of 2012. A bit far-reaching for a 300 page potboiler. Ambition? Too many disparate threads that are forced to illogically interconnect with the majority of casually-checked "facts" being simply re-worded from other sources. Detail? No inhabited mental or physical landscapes. Conclusions? Let's just all get along. Observations? Nothing revelatory. Religious and philosophical narrative? The narrative is structured so the plot line is advanced from the last sentence of one paragraph and magically hyperlinked to the first line in the next "episode." That's the structure. The whole "novel" is one extended hyperlink, with footnotes included. Wow, just like nonfiction! The one fictional quasi-religious section where the author attempts to "improve" upon the message of Jesus, comes across exactly as one reviewer noted - " a really bad rap song." In a book with Rozabal in the title, there is no justice done to the beautiful valley of Kashmir, the complex implications presented by the existence of Roza Bal, or the craft of fiction. The characters themselves just wander off.

The only virtue I can find, is that the author was the first to use Roza Bal in a fictional setting. But wait - what about THE PAPYRUS DOCUMENT, by Michael Cole? Same subject matter, but better written. So what's left to recommend TRL? Being a fictional account, it's likely to spike sales for the people who have labored in relative obscurity for years and put their reputations and in some cases, even their life, on the line and truly deserve to have their work find a larger readership. People like Suzanne Olsson surely laid the foundation upon which this clumsy edifice is built.

I'll likely finish this book, just to see how it all comes together. Unfortunately, the author adds far too much information in insignificant areas, thereby obscuring his plot details and further complicating an overly complex plot. I'm a fan of the Jesus-in-India hypothesis, but it irks me when (even in fiction) authors use spurious works like the Bhavishya Purana to "strengthen" their credibility; that text, though old, simply retrofitted "back-stories" into history to "prove" that Hinduism is the font of all religion. There's something to be said for the argument, but not for this particular "proof."

Anyway, my main beef is that the author tries to emulate Ian Fleming in providing an impressive amount of detail, but lacks Fleming's ability to restrict the detail to those areas where it counts. Giving manufacturers' specs for transatlantic aircraft and having Asian characters speak in Kanji is just a bit over the top: "Rozabal Line" thus comes across as a bit of an egoic attempt to show how much the author knows, whereas I'm sure the intent was much different. It would be fun to see a revised version sometime when the writer has more maturity. The plot is worthy, and a slimmed down version would likely be a great read.

Damn the Christian church! Damn the Islamic clergy! Damn the Zionists! If Shawn Haigins had his way there would be no organized religions left. Then what would he write about? And puh-leez, are we not seeing Buddhist monks in Burma taking part in a political uprising? Religion and politics go hand in hand and Haigins needs to come to terms with this basic fact.

i am a resident of goa, india, and have portugese ancestors. the extent of violence perpetuated by the portugese during the inquisition in goa seems to have been overplayed. yes, it is true that prisons were filled and that some torture may have happened, but to claim that all mosques and temples were attacked during this period may not being completely accurate. unfortunately this novel has referenced material from "guardian of the dawn" by richard zimler, which has also given an inaccurate view of events in goa during the period of portugese rule.

With no insightful understanding of his material, the author has produced a work completely void of depth and texture. Any profound meaning lies buried by an awkward writing style that would be far better suited to nonfiction. This "novel" rambles along like a train wreck of pilfered ideas (created from stumbled-upon websites and masked as original thinking), along the way trying to manufacture a nexus with the material and the disconnected characters. I read this book a week ago and already I can't recall character names because they are completely incidental. Their only purpose is to react; in the end they do nothing.

I realize this book was intended to be a potboiler, but even so I expected a glimmer of literary style. Some elegance and grace. Cohesion and flow. Characters with an inner life. A glimpse of Kashmir, even. Instead, I felt I was reading a high school term paper cobbled together by a teenager with a laptop and internet connection arriving at one-dimensional conclusions. No kidding, each paragraph is a distilled website - it's all directionless exposition signifying nothing.

Still, I journeyed on, hoping that once I plodded through the wooden characters and their stilted, leaden dialogue; through the dense, tangled plot; trudged through the multiple, lifeless settings empty of nuance and detail; through the sluggish pace and structure, stumbling over awkward syntax; past the historical inaccuracies and editorial errors - that somewhere, somehow out of the wreckage something could be salvaged. Nothing.

But even as bad as the writing seems at first, its slow slide into the ethereal at the end of the book becomes farcical. This extended poetic section strives to be serious but quickly degrades in the mind's ear to adopt the rhythm of a really long (and really bad) rap song! If you think I'm kidding, go ahead and try it for yourself. The ultimate message humankind has been waiting two thousand years to hear, and it belongs on a Greatest Hits of Hip-Hop album! Or maybe: The Rozabal Album: Being and Nothingness.

Finally, there is light at the end of the tunnel. Some hope for redemption. Some profound religious thinking. A satisfying conclusion. Instead, the story simply runs out of gas, putters to a halt, and the characters simply fade away into the background and out of memory leaving us feeling nothing.

I read The Rozabal Line (TRL) over two days but found myself struggling to cope with the information that Shawn Haigins has delivered. Holger Kersten's book "Jesus Lived in India" did present very cogent arguments about the Jesus in India hypothesis. The Rozabal tomb does exist but to stretch that to imply that the family lineage could be Islamic terrorists was a little too dramatic for me. I loved the non-fiction portions of the book that spoke of the similarities between Jesus and several other deities in various religions around the world. I also liked the final gospel at the end of the book. What I found unsettling was the basic premise of the book. TRL is the closest thing to Holy Blood Holy Grail. Readers of HBHG will recall the tediousness of wading through the research but will also remember the excitement of discovering something new at the turn of each page. TRL is a lot like that, though not of the exact same genre. The book starts off with a murder in a library and from there sucks you into a world of Buddhist lamas, Hindu temples, soldiers of Islam, Japanese assassins, secret Illuminati rituals etc. Shawn Haigins has used past life regression extensively to explain interconnections between various characters and this can be confusing at times, however, it also lends a mystical quality to the plot. I will look forward to reading Haigins' next book.

"The Rozabal Line" is an exciting richly detailed and tightly woven novel. It is loaded with surprises and includes hairpin turns and slow careful climbs to reach the highest peak of excitement, leaving the reader breathless, with no time to recover because the next moment of reading pleasure involves an unexpected drop into unanticipated depths. All I can say is move over Dan Brown, you have a rival author who has created a fantastic novel which interweaves four religious traditions: the hidden secrets of Christianity, the teachings of Buddhism, Islamic terrorism and the dark mysteries of Hinduism along with a secret society, called Crux Decussata Permuta, plus a beautiful but deadly Japanese female assassin. The characters are fully fleshed out with complex detail and variation of personality, making them come alive with purpose and meaning. As the plot develops and thickens within the first five pages of the novel, it hooks the reader into a game of assassination, terrorist plots, and a religious mystery.

Victor Morgan, a Catholic priest from New York has had waking dreams (or possible hallucinations or visions?) which started as a young child. As he grew into his role of parish priest his dreams or visions became more frequent and very much more clear, especially after his parents died unexpectedly. He was hospitalized due to the emotional stress associated with his loss. Victor shared the contents of his dreams with Martha, his only living relative and aunt. She suggested a clue, an explanation which was completely contrary to his religious beliefs but which after some research made sense, perhaps he was recalling past lives. He saw the past where he was Simon of Cyrene who carried the cross for Jesus when he fell on his way to be crucified. His search to understand the meaning of his visions took him to India and to Kashmir, the place where a tomb exists which is marked "Rauza-Bal" or Rozabal, "tomb of the prophet" named Yuz Asaf. Although located in a Moslem cemetery, the tomb beneath the headstone contains a sarcophagus which includes carvings of feet with distinctive puncture marks, marks which could be from only one thing, a crucifixion. Local records indicate the time in which Yuz Asaf lived coincided with when Jesus would have been alive ... if had he not been crucified to death or did he survive and possibly escape to Kashmir?

On the northern border of the Pakistani and Afghanistan border an olive skinned male Islamic leader meets with twelve followers who are willing to sacrifice their lives in the name of their great cause. The leader is plotting twelve huge terroristic events around the globe from which he believed Westerners would not ever emotionally recover.

Swakilki travels around the world ... and leaves dead bodies within her path. She was raised in a Catholic orphanage after her mother's unexpected death and was later adopted by a Japanese couple. Due to a traumatic childhood, she was cold and calculating and ripe for exploitation. She was trained in the tantric arts, along with skills to kill. The person who controls her activities and directs her actions to commit these atrocities ... remains secret. Yet he had a very important role in her past ... One of her victims was Professor Terry Acton who was searching in the archives at the Department for the Study of Religions which was part of the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. He inadvertently stumbled on some information which could throw Christianity into a panic. Oddly enough, during his early years he went to India to study under a yogi and befriended Martha Morgan, who also trekked to India to discover truths about her inner self. Many years later they again met under most unusual circumstances.

Shawn Haigins combines these tantalizing elements and fascinating characters to build a superbly enticing and intriguing story. This book will entertain and enlighten those who love a great murder mystery. It may provoke some readers who are secure in their religious beliefs to become shaken and less comfortable with themselves. A few will refuse to even consider reading the book, given its controversial contents. One must keep in mind despite the author's tremendous amount of research, and ample citing of references and acknowledgements, it is a work of fiction, created in the author's imagination. This author is very knowledgeable in various religious traditions. He has the ability to create depth and complexity from a wealth of resources to build an outstanding murder mystery. Erika Borsos [pepper flower]