Blasphemy | Douglas Preston | Oh Ye of Little Faith

Blasphemy | Douglas Preston | The words of Isabella is the best part.

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Blasphemy

	Blasphemy Douglas Preston Forge Books, 2008 - 416 pages average customer review:based on 143 reviews view larger image
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The world's biggest supercollider, locked in an Arizona mountain, was built to reveal the secrets of the very moment of creation: the Big Bang itself. The Torus is the most expensive machine ever created by humankind, run by the world?s most powerful supercomputer. It is the brainchild of Nobel Laureate William North Hazelius. Will the Torus divulge the mysteries of the creation of the universe? Or will it, as some predict, suck the earth into a mini black hole? Or is the Torus a Satanic attempt, as a powerful televangelist decries, to challenge God Almighty on the very throne of Heaven? Twelve scientists under the leadership of Hazelius are sent to the remote mountain to turn it on, and what they discover must be hidden from the world at all costs. Wyman Ford, ex-monk and CIA operative, is tapped to wrest their secret, a secret that will either destroy the world?or save it. The countdown begins?

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Oh Ye of Little Faith

I am a devout Christian - have been all my life. I am also a fan of Preston. I did not find anything in this book the least bit offensive. True, I am not an over the top Fundamentalist Christian, although I am sympathetic with them. It seemed to me that the characters that offended so many were clearly drawn to be way far out and beyond any of the known Fundamentalist leaders. If, in fact, anyone sees himself in them, then that is a problem for him and his own conscience, not the rest of us.
The so-called plot hole about the supposed two hour mob mobilization was made very reasonable, it seems to me, because of many plot strings reaching much further back in time. By the time of the "email" there was a mob already mobilized and raring to go. The political/military bungling of the whole mess was also very realistic. It took courage to write this book and courage to publish it. I think that reading it may do a lot of people a lot of good - and be entertaining as well. It is, at the very least, a "page turner".

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The words of Isabella is the best part.

Ok, I started this book because LHC is about to go online and I'm a Relics fan. Unfortunately this book is not as good as I have hoped. The story is slow (it did pick up pace near the end, but not a lot), and the storyline of the televangelist/pastor is rather boring. The lead scientist's resume is way over the top and sounds like a character from a bad science fiction novel. 10(?) people running a 40 billion dollar project occupying a mountain is not believable, and we didn't get any interesting details of the accelerator itself.

There are also some rather disturbing plotholes which remain unaddressed. I'm not going to spill the details, but suffice to say the author underestimated the power of the scientific method. A crticial requirement for a scientific discovery is repeatability, after you made the big announcement, others would want to repeat what you have done, and if they can't repeat it, your credibility in the science community would be in serious trouble. This would easily crash the scheme in the novel, even if it may take another 40 billion dollars.

In the end, I found the best part of the novel is what Isabella says, you don't have to agree with it, but it's a fun reading for anyone with a science/technology background.

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Disappointing Effort

I guess my main problem for this book would be that I just really didn't care. I'm not saying that the topic is lame or that the book is really bad but the author just didn't really develop the character or plot in a way that really made me care for either. I didn't really feel any attachment or concern for any of the characters and never really got to know them. The author has the ability to give the characters depth with some of their back stories but he just never really goes that deep into it and just sort of glosses over it and their past actions barely seem to drive them much in the present.

There are some other plot points throughout that were either not needed or some that I just thought to myself "there's no way that would happen." (Some Minor Spoilers) I mean seriously thousands of people amass in the middle of nowhere in Arizona because of a mass e-mail that went out only two hours prior. I mean come on, there's no way that many people probably even lived that close to the place and then all of a sudden there they were.

One last complaint. This book really wasn't going anywhere for about the first two-hundred pages or so. You get kind of the gist of the plot but you never really see the conflict till way in so there is no real anticipation to read further and with the really short chapter through the whole thing it was really easy for me to just say that was enough for now and put the book down.

I will say that I was a fan of Preston's last two solo works but this just seemed to fan flat and turn out to be a mediocre book at best. He is a good writer and does have some good ideas but this book just seemed rushed and he didn't let the characters and plot flesh themselves out better before he wrote and finished the book. Could of been better with some more time and a little bit more depth.

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