In His Image [Audio Cassette]

The Christ Clone Trilogy is fiction, but it is among the best researched an presented fiction written in any genre. Before the reader from Pennsauken slams a book, he should do more than skim the text.

I normally avoid modern thriller fiction....especially modern 'you can read this during in-flight service from Boston to D.C.' - and for some reason I keep feeling the need to remind myself why by reading modern thriller fiction.....

So here we go. Great Premise! That is what earned my three star rating of the book...just the premise. A journalist finds himself enlisted to a team of scientists who attempt to carbon-date the Shroud of Turin, the burial cloth said to be embossed with the image of Christ. One scientist removes dna samples (via fibers left on the shroud)and uses them to clone Christ....or so it would seem.

Flash forward years later, where the hot premise is dropped like a hot potato...and the book becomes little more than the average, dime-a-dozen political/war books...and many do it more effectively. The author is to be commended for going back and revising the book since the original publication to include such incidents as September 11th, the War on Terror, and the slaying of journalist Daniel Pearl....but after finishing the book....it seems like his effort is wasted in trying to put a shiny coating on a permanently dulled floor.

The characters are perhaps a bit more interesting than your usual Tom Clancy Rogues gallery, but are lost amidst the nuclear bombs, political maneuvering, and usurping of authority that comprise three quarters of this book.

Dull, dull, dull...except for those rare moments when Christopher Goodman, the 'clone' of Christ, displays his 'powers'. Other than that....the story loses grip on what interested me in the first place. Knowing that it is book one of a trilogy (and now knowing from the author himself that it was originally one large text) and knowing that the author has revised the story since initial publication....perhaps those revisions could have included more evidence of Christopher's powers being put to test/use, and a little more focus on what I assume is intended to be the main focus of the story, a clone of Christ??

Sorry to say, but (for me) this only served as a good reminder as to why I usually stick to the classics for a good story....with rare exception. The book is well written, I give it that....but I am a sucker for good in-depth characterization and this story just fails to deliver that for me. I have been encouraged to continue on in the trilogy, by the author, and perhaps some day I might. For anyone interested in a timely topic (cloning) and political/military/war intrigue, this will interest you.