Review: inconsistent
Rating: 1 out of 5
Date: 11 3, 2013
One good thing I can say about this book is that I read it through and came to the last page without being bored.Conflicted, yes. Perplexed, of course. Irritated, check.But not bored.This book popped out (elsewhere the author's name is John Cyta) among gay fiction and I really do not understand why as it only casts two lesbians as side characters while the rest of it is a macho-sex apotheosis with the main character managing to bed all the women.I am a man myself -if a very gay one- and I probably have it in my very male genes to condone such a sexist attitude more than a woman would probably do. The task is easier because the author does not hesitate to ridicule, harass and pull his character's leg. The author has the good grace to have Joseph laughed at more often than bedded.One key of this work is its humour. It is politically incorrect, gross, rough but it is there from page one and in many following pages, even the "sexy" ones. A compelling rhythm is also there: not consistently but often enough and sometimes it is even mixed with the a.m. humour making for irresistible pages.Grammar and editing are awful but I am under the impression that the author does not care about them.Even if I am generally very demanding in these two matters they are not the reason for the one-star rating.The reason I disliked this book is that its content does not make any kind of sense.- As an adventure romp it fails because the actual action covers less than a tenth of its length, the rest being spent on characters' interaction.- As a romance/character study it does not work because the characters remain one-dimentional.- As a christian novel it is inconsistent.The author points out some relevant ethical issues (death, faith, sexuality, happiness, sin, violence) and has no qualm in declaring some conservative christian attitudes nonsensical, but he is then unable to do more than that. Jesus -who is an actual character in this book- gives the usual "free-will" speech as the reason for all that is evil in the world and that is that.Either the author should have toned the proselytism down and left it as a moral background for his adventure or he should have increased its relevance avoiding the stark contradiction of Joseph conflicted and suffering about his sins one moment and as trigger-happy as ever a few moments later.Finally this book does not manage to avoid the usual oxymoron of conservative Usonian authors dealing with this genre (in books but in movies as well):On the one hand the evil guys are always hidden among the ranks of Washington's powers that be (or at least they have accomplices there), implying that the "system" is rank and corrupt.On the other hand the hero always stems from the military and is a staunch supporter of those conservative values (national security, patriotism, tradition, self reliance) that, taken to the extreme, animate the evil guys (just take the NSA scandal animating European press these days to have a real-life example).