Customer Reviews

This Breathing World

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This book is terribly boring, period. The premise sounded promising: an scribe of Syrian origin in ancient Rome, Mafuz, spends his time altering the literary works of other writers and enlists some disciples to do the same. In a parallel story, Lawrence, a Harvard student, commits a series of murders and is intrigued by the alterations performed to Gibbon"s "Fall of the Roman Empire" treatise.

The nature of the alterations to the Gibbon, the reason or motivation for the murders,the plot if you will, is completely absent. Characters jump in as needed to create a semblance of a plot which remains "open", unexplained and needless. The descriptions of libraries in Harvard and ancient Rome are repetitive. The constant reference to the weather and street names as means of description wears thin very soon. The erudite details regarding ancient roman times fail to create a sense of place or atmosphere which is probably what the author intended. And the erotic episodes are completely gratuitous in most cases and indistinguishable from each other. In other words, the lack of story is weaved with episodes of erotic nature which fail to arouse interest.

Most characters have absolutely no sense or function and are interchangeable. Even if we wanted to concede that may be that is how the protagonists sees the world, this makes for a very dull motivation. If at least the descriptions were poetic or inspired but every thought and phrase barely rises above adequate or simply implausible. Save your time and read Gibbon's "Fall of the Roman Empire".