Customer Reviews

The Sign

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(25)
1 star:		(64)

 

 

I just finished The Sign and couldn't put it down. It was a real page turner, and at the same time it had a lot of great ideas and comments that really made me think. I thnk it's Mr Khoury's best book so far. I loved Gracie and Matt, I thought they were great characters that felt natural and very real to me. I also loved Jabba and his banter with Matt. The story is fast paced and huge with great action that takes you around the world. I could already see it as a movie especially every time the sign shows up, from the great opening in Antarctica to the big moments at the end which I won't describe here not to ruin it for everyone who didn't read it yet.

But reading the other reviews here, a word of warning: this book might not be for you! It all depends on what your political view is. Even though it's the characters in the book who are talking, I did get the feeling that Mr Khoury agrees with their point of view. I happen to agree with it, so it wasn't a problem for me, I loved it. But if you think keeping religion and politics separate is a bad idea (even though it's something our founding fathers wanted), if you think America was at its best these last eight years, if you think the war in Iraq wasn't a humanitarian tragedy, if you think the wrong person won the election and is now our president, and if you watch Beck and Hannity and Limbaugh and not Jon Stewart, then this book DEFINITELY isn't for you!!!

I am a Sunday school teacher and a Ph.D. chemist. I make these admissions to demonstrate that I am not a "religious nut" nor an "athiest scientist". Not suggesting anyone else here is; just stating that I am not.

If you enjoy intelligent writing that has just the right mix of science, religion, mother-earth love, and happy endings, this would be a good book for you. I don't understand the bitterness of some of the reviews. I didn't feel this book expressed hate towards any group. In fact, I thought it was an incredibly open-minded writing praising ALL religions. A quote from the book: "We all pray to the same God. That's all that matters. ... God doesn't care about what you eat or what you drink. He doesn't care about how often you pray to him or what words you use or where you go to do that. He doesn't care who you vote for. He only cares about how you behave toward one another. That's all that matters."

That doesn't sound hateful to me.

Read the book- read it as it is (a novel). Enjoy it. I did.

Unlike the vast majority of critiquers, I really enjoyed this book. It was a great chase/race against time and met my definition of an easy read. I had no problem with his view on religion or his view on Bush, though he tended to get a bit preachy, especially toward the end. However, the action never stopped and the story moved right along.

Where I didn't like the way Matthew Reilly made the Americans the super bad guys in his books, and him being a New Zealander, I had no problem with Mr. Khoury (a Brit) using Americans as bad guys because he also used them as the good guys so it didn't look so biased.

I almost put the book down because I thought it was a Christian novel, but it turned out to be just a thriller with all religions being knocked. Sure he gave Bush a good bashing, but it's not surprising considering the polarization our former Dubya caused with the rest of the world.

As for the writing, as with other Brits, he tends to mix points of view with abandon, and breaks the "rules" us unpublished writers are stuck to. However, it was only annoying in a couple of spots where I wasn't sure who's head he was in.

Also, Mr. Khoury resolved things in a way I liked, so that was a big plus for me. I can understand why Christians and Bush lovers would hate this book and that's fine. There are plenty of books I hate for my own reasons. In this case, I loved it. I will have to look for his other works. Highly recommended.

I don't like the way religion has entered into the reviews of the book. Shame on this effort. But on to review: with so many good books out there this one simply isn't. Its ok, but slow and bogged down with multiple story lines and dogma. Other Khoury books are better. Try another one.

Although the book started very slow (the first 60 pages were BORING), it picked up speed and became a very engrossing read. I would highly recommend it. If you believe that man was created 5000 years ago, then this is not a book for you. It warns readers of the danger of the U.S.not heeding it's founding fathers wise advice of keeping state and religion seperate. I am all for Christian values and what is preached in the Bible. However, when the "poor" Christians in this country are hood winked by their false religious leaders to vote into power people who do not care about them or Christian values and practice adultery, sodomy and sieze power to make a quick buck for themselves and for their future generations to come at the cost of all American Citizens, I am apalled. No matter what the beliefs of the author, he has argued that point well and I agree that if Americans do not wake up, we will become a third world country addicted to TV and poor eating habits!!

this book was a great read, i was counting the hours to get back to it , every evening in the gym of my complex. Time flew on that treadmill and the read was very enjoyable.

The action is very fast paced , it starts in Africa, then Boston and antarctica, to Egypt and Houston.

It is a shame that people will judge it based on the political view, this is very narrow "mindedness" , the action and the thrill were great.

Probably as a former Bostonian and MIT student it meant to me more than others !!!

HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT

This was actually a good thriller. But I think the story was overshadowed by the writers political views. Not just a slight political bias here and there, but a straight out political lecture. To review, the bad guys of the book are George W. Bush, Karl Rove, Sarah Palin, John McCain, Ronald Reagan, the religious right, evil businessman, etc. Now for the good guys, the climate change global warming activists. His premise simply states that the American people are too stupid to understand the issues, they mindlessly follow the religious right, and need to be educated by the "more sophisticated" of the population. He is simply the other side of the Glen Beck coin, an irony always lost on the left.

Like I said, this was a good thriller, but the guys writes like an angry jr. college political science professor. Again, as a thriller, I would recommend it. However, I am glad that I bought it on amazon, I wouldnt want this guy to get any of my hard earned money

Raymond Khoury has made an impressive name for himself in the relative short span of two novels, THE LAST TEMPLAR and THE SANCTUARY. One can count on him to keep things moving from first page to last by setting a number of different storylines in motion that converge toward each other until meeting in an explosive and memorable climax. Khoury's latest effort continues with that tradition.

THE SIGN deftly and expertly switches among three different locales --- Antarctica, Egypt, and Boston, Massachusetts --- drawing seemingly disparate events closer together while slowly revealing their common threads. In Antarctica, a television news crew on hand to film the breaking of an ice shelf, thought by some to be caused by global warming, witnesses and captures an image of the manifestation of a mysterious, almost indescribable glowing visual phenomenon --- the sign --- that is practically blinding in its intensity and believed to be like nothing seen before. The spectacle is so breathtaking that almost immediately the phenomenon becomes a worldwide sensation, one that is felt in many quarters to be divine in origin.

Meanwhile, an enigmatic holy man, known to the world as Father Jerome, is living quietly in Egypt among one of the world's oldest monastic colonies. His solitary and prayerful existence, however, is about to be interrupted, perhaps forever, by the revelation that he has some foreknowledge of the phenomenon as well.

And in Boston, an ex-convict named Matt Sherwood, who is still mourning the death of his brother two years previously, suddenly finds himself embroiled in a controversy that is either mankind's greatest hope or greatest swindle when he begins asking too many of the wrong questions of the wrong people. When the murder of his brother's best friend is pinned on him, the police are the least of his worries. A team of highly trained operatives that seems to be everywhere at once is pursuing Sherwood through the streets of Boston, and his only ally appears to be a highly knowledgeable IT specialist who, tech abilities notwithstanding, has few skills that are transferable to a firefight. However, Sherwood eventually gains an unlikely ally, one who has an unexpected connection to the glowing manifestation that has captured the world's attention.

Father Jerome is the object of media and public attention that he neither desires nor wishes, even as his very existence threatens to trigger a new round in the holy wars already raging around him. When he reluctantly accepts an invitation from a televangelist to journey to Houston, Texas, for a historic religious gathering --- and a hopeful manifestation of the sign --- he sets a chain of events into play that will almost assuredly result in catastrophe.

THE SIGN has its moments when it veers off track into a treatise on controversial subject matter. What is interesting here is that at least one set of villains seems to hold the same views as the author, with a tacit "the devil made me do it" justification for their actions. Unfortunately it doesn't completely work; neither does the editorializing in which the omnipresent narrator engages to a far-too-frequent extent, to the occasional derailing of the storyline. If you can slide past those shortcomings, however, and take THE SIGN for what it is at its core --- a thriller that easily races from the page to your eye at a page a minute --- you will find it well worth your time.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

I'm bewildered by the negative reviews of this book, citing Bush bashing and Christian bashing and how awful it is that the secular liberal author has written this book....

It's a fictional story--very, very well written, as a matter of fact. I'm a Christian, and I was not at all offended by the semi-sleazy evangelist character. Hey, there ARE real-life semi-sleazy evangelists! The Bush-bashing character is a Iraq war Veteran who, discovering there were no WMDs, is very bitter about being wounded over there. There are real-life bitter Iraq war Veterans, too!

Geez, I can't imagine that I'd be reading very much if I were always so concerned about having my political or religious views validated. I thought the book was very good. I particularly liked the way the author moved back and forth between the characters/locations.

It was an interesting plot and exciting read--enjoyed it thoroughly!

The Sign is about the titular sign that gives Christians around the world cause for alarm at a supposedly-coming apocalypse. Was an okay book, if somewhat hard to follow at times, with a priest giving a good message in the end (i.e. "God doesn't care about whom you vote for"), although it's somewhat marred by Khoury's leftist politicking and thought-policing of conservatives. But if you are of leftist opinion it might be a more worthwhile read.