Like a white person saying "bling" unironically...
Mediocre, historically questionable religious fantasy ** by A reader
I can't say I was impressed with this one. For one thing, it's not just one book, it's an anthology, which is fine, but if I wanted to read something like that, I'd go for something a little more respectable like Naked Came The Stranger or Atlanta Nights.
Among other things, I don't get the main protagonist, YHWH. As a God, he reads like a demented child shooting BBs at the goldfish in the first section, and in the second part he comes off as kind of absentee, with his kid taking over the action for a surprisingly short stint in the middle. (This, narratively, is actually kind of interesting, because it goes through his life four different times, using a different unreliable narrator each time. It's like Catch-22 on steroids.) But after that, we get some batshit weirdo named Paul spouting all kinds of rules and suggestions that don't seem to follow from what Jesus said.
Editing is sloppy at best; some of the most critical sections have multiple authors, including the first five books, which are a complete muddle, just barely smoothed out into a quasi-coherent narrative. There's a few hero stories I like (though I didn't get that one about Samson at all -- who is this guy supposed to appeal to? He was a dumb-as-a-brick musclehead who somehow had a leadership position.), though it seems liberally interspersed with tedious lists of laws and censuses, as well as some truly horrific scenes of hyperfanaticism. (I think there's got to be a special place in hell for that Jephthah boy.)
The songbook in the middle is interesting, if not exactly what I'd call fun, while Ecclesiastes sounds like it was written by some depressed gothboy and the Song of Songs was pretty much wall-to-wall horndoggery, like Lords of Acid on an Ecstasy overdose. The prophets are pretty messed up too (was Ezekiel schizophrenic? It's too difficult to make sense of without assuming they were the ravings of a paranoid madman.). There's also a lot of scenes and images of appalling violence and petty hatred straight out of the Turner Diaries.
I don't get this book. I really don't. I hear people saying it changed their life, and I'm forced to say "into what?". Oh well, some books are just critic-proof, and I guess this is one of them. If you get it, though, make sure you get the director's cut edition, because it includes a few extra books, including one that tells a nifty story involving potato pancakes.
