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The Gnostic Mystery by Randy Davila
My review
rating: 1 of 5 stars
This book really tries to be two things. First and foremost, it tries to be a religious tractate. Second, and only secondarily, it tries to put these ideas into a dramatic format a la The daVinci Code.
First, as to the dramatic content-- it's just not there. The dialogue is stilted, relentlessly expository, and poorly organized. The general impression I got was that the author didn't really want to bother with it because he was more interested in getting his point across. The net effect is that the dramatic elements read like the filler between sex scenes in a porn story.
Despite its comparison (in a review on the back) it only hopes to be as intruguing as The daVinci Code. I did not think The daVinci Code was that well-written, but none thing it did well was it created real tension as to what the secret was that was being hidden. In this book, the game is given away at the very outset-- and the author's choice to keep skipping around in time only serves to jumble the exposition which is clearly the author's main objective.
As for the material presented itself, it's laughably misinformed. The author obviously favors Gnosticism over what he calls the "Literalism" (what we might call Orthodoxy), but his conception of Gnosticism is not historically accurate. This, in itself, is not a bad thing-- except for the fact that the book relies heavily on supposed historical information.
One of the reviews on the back cover says the bookm will "shake Western readers to their core." That would be true if the information presented had any historical validity; or if the information was well-presented instead of a brain-dump disguised as dialogue; or if The da Vinci Code hadn't already blazed the trail in the public's mind for wildly fantastical theories about early Christianity.
As it stands the only thing shaking is my head at the people who think any of this is original, insightful, enlightening, or even good writing.
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