: The Genesis Code
Author: John Case
I picked this up at a used bookstore; it seemed familiar. A while back I’d heard the author talk on KGO radio and his premise sounded intriguing — creating a clone of Jesus by using DNA from hair and other "genuine" artifacts of the Church. Okay, I’ve just ruined the book for you. This is a one-joke book, and it’s really annoying. You literally do not find out the key detail — what I just told you — until the last few pages of the book! It’s lame, because from page one there are hints and mysteries and shadows but the author "cleverly" refuses to divulge what is happening. He does this poorly, by giving us a selective narrator. Instead of having a character talk to another with dialog, revealing the secret to us, he basically writes, "The man told him the secret and he was horrified." So you spend the whole book trying to figure out this great secret as characters do mysterious things and others kill and run and search — but you don’t have the faintest idea why any of this is happening! (Or why you should care.) Of course, in my case, I knew (or had a vague idea), so all the cloak-and-dagger was doubly annoying. I was hoping for a book that explored the religious and ethic impact of such a cloning — what a fantastic idea — but instead all I got was a routine mystery/spy/action novel with nothing new until the last page, and then, after dropping the bombshell, it ended. As a routine thriller; its not bad, though not as good as say, Ken Follett. Just don’t set your expectations high, like I did.
Topic: [/book] |
