Customer Reviews

The Six Messiahs

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

In looking at some of the reviews here there seems to be an element of wistfulness for the List of Seven and an opinion that this is not as good as novel as it's precursor. I was fortunate enough to wait two years between reading the two, so while I can agree that this may not be as good as the List of Seven, which was a six-star book in my opinion, this is still a great, wonderful, compelling, and extraordinarily fun read. It's definitely still a five-star book in it's own right and I wouldn't have missed it for the world. If you have read List of Seven, then keep on going and read this one too. It's full of occult forces, evil organizations, weird magic, weirder heroes, and our good old Arthur Conan Doyle, 15 years older and now a successful and world famous author. If you haven't read the List of Seven, then for pity's sake man, order it today and set aside a day for some wonderful fun.

In the Six Messiahs, AC goes to America for a book signing tour and promptly gets swept up into a shocking and bewildering murder mystery on the German cruise liner that is ferrying him to the States. He reconnects to Jack, the secret agent, who is not himself and strangely withdrawn, sullen, and distant (probably the primary reason most people didn't like this sequel as much.) Upon reaching the States they are swept up into a mystery regarding the thefts of the world's most sacred religious tomes and must journey, along with several holy people, to the American Southwest to confront a strange cult and try to reccover the tomes. Many of the original cast of the List of Seven return, but as in real life, they are not quite the people they were fifteen years ago, for better or worse. This novel ties up the loose ends left in the first and is a very satisyfing and exceptionally fun read. Ignore the nay-sayers, you will enjoy this book too. If you finish this one and want more stories of AC Doyle battling the dark forces of the occult, make sure to get Thomas Wheeler's "The Arcanum". It's great read in a similar vein as this one.

The List of 7 was such a fun read, I rushed right out and bought the sequal, The 6 Messiahs. I have to say that while Frost continues to be a good writer and settles well into his own narrative style, Messiahs just didn't live up to the expectations The List of 7 set up. Where List followed the life of Jack Sparks as the inspiration for Sherlock Holmes, Messiahs showcases a physically and spiritually deseased Sparks that causes the book to lose that Holmesesque quality. It's still a good read, and the ending was true to form and well done, even if it was a little short. If you read and enjoyed The List of 7, give this book a try. If you haven't, don't start with this book. It won't give you the full scope of Frost's talents.

Although it has been a few years since I read The list of 7
and the 6 Messiahs, both left me craving perhaps Frosts next
trip into Doyle and sparks next adventure. I was less
enthusiastic with The 6 Messiahs, and thought it should have been longer. yet all in all both books were thouroughly enjoyable.

Ok, so it's not the same as The List of Seven. But I think it stands on its own, brings great closure to the earlier story and brought back one of my favorite characters, Jack Sparks. As a story goes, it held my interest from cover to cover and I wasn't the least bit disappointed. If you read it, don't go into it expecting the exact same book as its predecessor, because you won't get it. But if you enjoy seeing these old friends again, meeting new characters and getting a quick course in different religions across the world, you'll definitely enjoy it. I am hoping for a third but it probably won't happen.

Not as engrossing as "The List of 7", but worth reading. I'd probably rate it higher if it had been the first book, not the sequel, as it suffers when compared to the breakneck intrigue of "7". I would have appreciated a few pages of wrap-up at the end (it grinds to an abrupt halt), and I think I shouldn't have read them back-to-back (it made the comparisons less forgiving), but it's an enjoyable book nonetheless.

This book seemed so different from the List of 7 it seemed like a seperate story as opposed to a sequel. The story flowed well but seemed to struggle at the end almost as if the ending was written for another book or by another author. I did enjoy the book and look forward to more from this author.

I read this book a few years ago and the it still stays with me. Not in the way a work of art does, but more like a piece of bad roast you had at that hillbilly bar. It was supposed to be dead but you thought to yourself "O MY GOD, it's still moving!" Anyway, I couldn't care less for the characters and the plot (all 100 of them) was horrible. To make a long story short, it ended up in the recycle bin.

I thought the author couldn't do worse than his job with The List of 7--how wrong I was! The 6 Messiahs is an endless stream of predictable moments and horrible plot development. Characters and situations seemed trite and confusing and the last part of the novel was a complete waste. I still believe Frost has the potential for great exciting fiction, but somehow he fails to deliver.

I was given this book as a Christmas gift by someone who thought I would like it. I read it in its entirety because I felt obligated.

First, let's be clear. Mark Frost is a successful and esteemed writer. He received a Writers Guild Award and an Emmy nomination for the acclaimed television series Hill Street Blues, and was co-creator and executive producer of the legendary ABC television series Twin Peaks.

However, what is very clear is that screenwriting skill and success does not necessarily translate into the writing of novels. I'm sure there is a Ven diagram somewhere--circles that intersect in a narrow slice--that might adequately depict how the skills, training, and experience of a screenwriter intersect with those of a novelist. A few basic elements are like-minded and shared; most are not.

This was Frost's sophomore effort as a novelist. His first, The List of Seven, has seemingly received better reviews but, alas, I have not read it. And "sophomore" provides a suitable term: this book might have been written by an intelligent and creative 17-year-old who hadn't yet learned how to craft an idea into a novel.

The Six Messiahs, at its core, is an original idea about a confluence of disparate individuals--at first unknown to each other--who must come together to prevent what is foretold at the beginning will be a calamitous event of worldwide impact. A hook is that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, already of eminent Sherlock Holmes fame, is one of the central characters and is making his first trip to the United States.

This makes for a great "elevator spiel," as Hollywood pitch-men might say. Our hypothetical 17-year-old could have come up with that.

In the subsequent inspiration and effort lies success.

This novel was unsuccessful on so many fronts, I don't know where to begin.

Frost is a screenwriter. He understands plot and, I would bet, storyboarded the events of The Six Messiahs before he started writing. In the hands of a novelist--albeit a novelist who would no doubt want to change the ending; more on that later--the plot could be made to work.

But Frost is a screenwriter, and obviously has no training when it comes to crafting a novel.

Point-of-view was the first thing to provide a clue that this was not the work of a skilled novelist. Frost opened with Doyle's POV in italics. It was a lengthy passage and should clue you then that italics were being used due to prose deficiencies.

And later deficiencies there were. For anyone who has ever taken a creative writing class, this is the absolute poster-child of how to screw-up POV in a novel. This is the element that made reading The Six Messiahs most agonizing for me. Frost could not relinquish himself of his screenwriter persona.

POV jumped all over the place like a hoard of agitated monkeys in an Amazonian rain forest. It went from omniscient POV to third-person to first-person and back again in the blink of an eye. It jumped in and out of the POV of at least 20 characters. I'm all for POV variance and experimentation, mind you...just not in contiguous, confusing, illiterate paragraphs. The whipping-around POV might work in a TV series, but in a novel its a travesty.

What's even worse is the use of verbs. Frost mixes present tense and past tense within the same paragraph as if there's no distinction. Again, I assume the present-tense character in him comes out because he is a screenwriter. But the admixture of verbs is not only annoying, it makes the writer look as if he has no command over the English language.

Pacing in this novel is atrocious. In places it moves well, in others--particularly in a denouement where Eileen and Doyle first encounter each other--it is a comedy of errors. The author indulges himself, seemingly at will, in bits of what he feels are humor. It doesn't work.

There is a passage where Arthur and his brother Innes have a mutual moment of heartfelt weeping, and then manage to collect themselves. All the while seemingly less than five seconds of furious action has gone on around them.

Which leads me to wonder if the author himself gave this novel a careful proofread, or simply sent a draft to a hired line-editor.

The writing and construction is that bad.

And how about the blatant historical errors in the book? In one chapter, "Buckskin" Frank fires 15 rounds from his Henry rifle in less than five seconds. The Henry .44 caliber brass-framed rifle could fire at a maximum rate of 28 rounds per minute when used optimally. In my experience, there is no lever-action rifle that can be made, mechanically, to fire 15 rounds in less than five seconds.

Then, despite this amazing firearm and his mythological capability with it, at one point, "Buckskin" Frank decided he couldn't shoot the loaded Henry rifle already in his hands quickly enough, so he decided to let go of the Henry and take the extra time to draw his Colt sidearm. Think about that tactical decision for just one moment.

And don't forget about the Gatling guns in the novel. They were an important set-piece in the final chapter of the book. Except that Gatling guns were never belt-fed, as Frost presented. Another fail on simple research.

A good idea, but with too many characters (can you say "mini-series"?), absolutely no control over POV, poor language skills, bad pacing, and no bother at all to research the history of the period.

But wait. There's more.

Without giving the plot away, I will say this: Deus ex machina.

That is Latin for "god out of the machine." This is a plot device whereby a seemingly inextricable problem is suddenly and abruptly solved with the contrived and unexpected intervention of some new event, character, ability, or object.

Deus ex machina. Something any self-respecting novelist would avoid at all costs.

Mark Frost has penned a travesty of a novel. The real disaster is that you might consider reading it.

While I loved the List of Seven - this book is basically a retread of the first minus the charming personality of Jack Sparks. It seems he survives his demise - only to come back as a shell of his former self.

If you love Sherlock Holmes spatiches with a little ooga-booga thrown in - this is probably your cup of tea.

Not bad ... just not great.