Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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263 of 271 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Epic gore-flick spoiled by weird ending, poor characters, plot holes, and too much deus-ex machina, June 28, 2008
Now I'm not usually into fiction, but on the recommendation of some friends who told me this book would change my life, I thought: "what the hey?"
I've gotta say I was disappointed. This could have been an epic gore flick, with millions of people being slayed in all directions by the central character. I mean, he doesn't spare the horses - all the people on earth (apart from 8 blokes on a boat), all the first sons of Eygpt, pretty much all the neighbouring tribes of Israel - they all get slashed up in some gruesome horror scenes. And hey, there's some great romance and sex scenes in there - from the Song of Songs, to the implied incest in the first chapter. It even touches on some freudian themes, with brother turning against brother.
But really, that's where the entertainment ends, and the complaints begin.
First of all the characters are poorly written. Take Adam and Eve, the first characters we meet. We've barely been introduced to them when they make the awesomely stupid decision to betray an all seeing and knowing God in his own garden - thus condemning all mankind through the magical concept of inherited sin. Think that's far fetched? What about God himself - the main character - putting the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil in the *middle of the garden* and making all the fruit juicy and nice! What was he thinking?! And he didn't even warn them about the lying talking snake he'd made - something that any conscientious omniscient God would clearly do.
And if you think the characters are unbelievable - just wait for the plot twists. For about 90% of the book the main character is a homocidal, racist meglomaniac, guiding his "chosen people" through endless slaughters of opposing tribes, and of each other when people don't obey his "rules". Think Patrick Bateman on crack. Then, with only a New testament to go, and just as I was enjoying the action - suddenly he becomes all touchy feely! Why oh why writers feel they *have* to put in implausible plot twists, I just don't know! And please, don't get me started on the end - when it goes all Stanley Kubrick! Sure, I understand it's fantasy as a genre - but come on, does it have to go against so much mainstream science?
As well as that, the dialogue between characters is paper thin. Take the New Testament, when Mary finds out she's pregnant. She tells Joseph that she's been knocked up by an angel, and he just flat out believes her! Not even a "hold on sista, we're going on Maury" - he just takes it at face value! How are any of us meant to believe that? Honestly, I swear some of the scripting was done by a monkey with a typewriter. Take this gem from 2 Samuel:
"Set ye Uriah in the forefront of the hottest battle, and retire ye from him, that he may be smitten, and die."
I mean, who speaks like that? Honestly! And as if the dialogue wasn't bad enough, the whole tone is preachy and moralising, rather than engaging and well written. Sure, I understand the author clearly doesn't like Jerry Springer, but surely he doesn't need to advocate the smiting of every man who's ever slept with a woman and her mother - along with a myriad of other strange capital crimes? And as for the homophobia, sexism and racism - I know this was written in a bygone age - but did it really have to go that far? I did my best to overlook it, but it's pretty difficult when whole towns and tribes are getting destroyed.
At the end of the day, anyone wanting a little horror might do well with the first half of this book - although I wouldn't let your kids read it! But if you're looking for truly impressive fantasy fiction, you should stick to Tolkien, or in the modern day, the Harry Potter books.
What had the potential for a good fantasy horror romp ended up a disappointingly written and loosely put together damp squib. Avoid.
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144 of 154 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A decent sophomore effort., June 17, 2008
For those of you who don't know, this is God's second novel after the Old Testament. It's a marked improvement, in my opinion. He got rid of a lot of his previous angst and scorn, and has really begun to show some of the maturity present in his later works. He's become a much more loving and kind God, and, noticeably, he doesn't throw nearly as many tantrums as he did in the first book.
That said, there is still vast room for improvement. Plot wise, there isn't really much suspense, and the story can be incredibly repetitive. In like four chapters, he just rewords the same basic story over and over again. To top that off, he puts those chapters one right after the other. Like we wouldn't notice! I like the whole Jesus character, but let's face it, the whole good guy martyr thing has been done before. There was no need to devote so much of the book to that guy.
If you're really looking for a good God read, check out the Koran or the Book of Mormon. They're much more polished. Plus, the storytelling in the Book of Mormon is wild. Some people say it goes too far and point to it as evidence that God's over the hill, but I beg to differ. Just read it. God's like a genius or something. I mean, magic spectacles! Tell me that isn't awesome. I don't know how he dreams up some of this crap.
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77 of 84 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good message but suffers in implementation, June 13, 2004
I'm not generally a fan of fantasy fiction, but I felt obligated to read this title, it being the popular example of the genre. The story has a good premise that I can't help but think suffers in its implementation. The collaborative writing and editing processes, to say nothing of numerous translations, render the basic message somewhat indistinct. For example, as early as the first chapter, the authors make an attempt to introduce literally everything into the plot, even going so far as to suggest that the beginning of the story is the beginning of the universe. The rest of the book, however, makes no attempt to reconcile these far-reaching plot threads, instead focusing solely on the actions of a (relatively) small group of characters in the Middle East. Even with these strenuous limitations the remainder of the novel suffers from an overabundance of characters, most of whom are crude caricatures and only mentioned in passing. The authors would have done better to limit the scope of the plot, both in time and setting, to better highlight their message. The few characters who are developed suffer from serious inconsistencies as a result of the collaborative writing process.Take, for example, the main character, God. In the first half of the book, which has a very linear and logical format, God is something of a bully. Only a few pages into the first chapter he has condemned the entire human race to a lifetime of suffering by casting their ancestors out of an idyllic paradise. Whenever anyone says or does anything critical of him, God either kills them outright or makes them wish they were dead. He kills women and children, he levels cities, at one point he even wipes out the whole human race with the exception of a single elderly couple, who are forced to engage in years of back-breaking manual labor simply to survive. God's history is never fleshed out; the authors simply leave him in place, unchanging, as a literal deus ex machina to be called into play whenever the plot gets too convoluted. It isn't hard to imagine that God's character in this part of the book was inspired by the Greek ideal of Zeus: an omniscient entity who rains suffering upon mankind from on high whenever he's in a bad mood. At some point the original authors apparently felt they had done their part and the book sat around unfinished for a few centuries until a new group came along to add their contribution. The second portion of the story, the "New Testament", doesn't start off in a promising manner: God, evidently still in his Zeus mode, impregnates a mortal woman who, by his own admission, has done nothing wrong. (The authors even make a point of saying that, although married, she was a virgin prior to this episode.) Predictably, she gives birth to a half-human demigod, who at the age of thirty suddenly decides to start talking to people about his origins. Apparently fatherhood has softened God up somewhat; he's now willing to forgive and forget, no matter what people do, as long as they're willing to tell him how great his son, Jesus, is. The authors make no attempt to explain the about-face, and after a while some Romans show up to kill off the Jesus character, without God's interference. The intervening portions of the book are devoted to a collection of pithy parables with less-than-subtle morals, presented out of order and without context. Here the editors' methodology of slapping together the works of disparate authors, even leaving out whole books to clear up the larger inconsistencies, comes into play. A few main characters wander about, telling everyone how great Jesus was, presumably so that God, who doesn't show up at all in this part of the story, will treat them well. The narrative is stripped of any cronological basis and on the whole becomes fairly tedious. Having fortunately sensed that they were losing their audience, a third group of authors then came along and added a brief summary so fantastic that it makes the rest of the book seem like an accurate history. God makes another appearance, just in time to see the human race he allegedly loved destroyed - except, of course, for those people who told other people about what a nice guy his son was. On the whole, the book could have better presented its moral message by sticking to a well-defined format, be it a cronological narrative or a succession of fables. It's certainly worth a read; just be prepared to be confused by the characters and their motivations.
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