Victory Over Vice

by Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

Catholic-ometer: 4.5 of 5

Enjoyability: 4.5 of 5

I'm a tremendous fan of Bishop Sheen's work, and I love the way he spoke and wrote.  I knew I was going to like this book from the get-go.  However, to be perfectly honest, out of all the books by Fulton J. Sheen that I've read, this is probably the weakest.  By no means, however, does that make it bad.

He outlines, in this book, the various vices of Catholic tradition, and how each corresponds to the different "words from the cross;" an interesting subject of discussion, a good talking-point, and a subject on which to reflect.  However, to be honest, I actually thought that his words on the subject of each vice had more to do with the words from the cross than they did with the vices, and I've already seen him treat of that subject (better, I think) in "the Life of Christ."

That's not enough for a star down, exactly, or even a half-star down, but I needed to take points off somewhere, because I found Bishop Sheen overgeneralizing on some of the topics he brings up in this book.  For example, he says in his chapter on Gluttony, "reason demands that food and drink be taken for the necessities and conveniences of nature."  This, I think, is much too broad a statement, and it can simply be misinterpreted much too easily.

I think Bishop Sheen assumes that if you're picking up this book, then that means you're already well-formed in your conscience, and are looking for a little bit of encouragement, but it's certainly possible for people to misinterpret and misunderstand what's said herein.  In fact, I could probably write a whole book myself on how to correct such misinterpretations.

Still, for the most part, the book accomplishes its objective; not outlining specific theological truths or ethical doctrines, but drawing our attention back to our own sins and imperfections, to give us the chance to correct them.  I personally prefer to dwell on the virtues, rather than the sins, but I can understand how some people would have an easier time focusing on their sins than on their virtues.

On the whole, I enjoyed this book, and was pleased with many of its insights, and many of its quotable sayings.  For example "one thief was saved.  Let no one despair.  One theif was lost.  Let no one presume."

I reccomend this book to the audience that Sheen probably intended; those who are already fairly strong in their faith, and just need a little push to remind them of how far they still have to go to achieve perfect holiness.

Absolute Relativism

by Chris Stefanick

Catholic-ometer: 4.5 of 5

Enjoyability: 4.5 of 5

Relativism is the bain of rational thought.  Every time; in the modern western world, that rational thought is suppressed, you can be sure some form of relativism was behind it, and this sixty-page, very short book explains why from several angles.  Here is the reason why Christianity is a better environment for clear thinking that relativism.  Here is why relativism crushes more freedoms and belief systems than any other method of thinking.  Chris Stefanick's explanations of these difficult truths are well-researched, and for the most part, right on target.  He doesn't mince words or mess around, nor ask readers to bear with him until he's already said enough on topic to earn their trust, which is a plus.  Mastery of the topic at hand is key when writing a nonfiction book like this one.

However, I can't give it a perfect grade, because at about the book's midpoint, Mr. Stefanick begins using questionable phrases to describe certain things.  For example, on page 31, he says that in addition to challenging people, Jesus also "accepted people as they were."

This alone would earn a half-star down in my book.  "Accept you as you are" is an -exceedingly- loaded phrase in the modern world.  It means essentially "being perfectly satisfied with person X, to the point of believing they're perfect, or at least, wanting nothing further out of them, and certainly never asking them to change anything about themselves or their actions."  None of this applies to Jesus in the least.  He was very clear and direct about all human beings being sinners and needing repentance and humility to get back into any kind of decent relationship with God.  He also says that Jesus welcomed all sorts of people back, regardless of their sin, but the thing is; the sin wasn't the point.  Jesus welcomed people back, not on the basis of their sin, but on the basis of their penitence.  In other words, in order to be "accepted" by Jesus, we need to be sincerely sorry for our sins.

There are a few other historical and theological missteps, but the only other serious one is this; making light of the importance of being Catholic, and implying that other religions, in their way, can "lead others to God."

Sure, people sincerely trying to follow the tenets of a religion turn their thoughts to God, and maybe, if they knew that the Catholic Church was right, they'd join in a heartbeat, but that doesn't mean that the religion itself (the Baptist religion, for example) lead them to God.  It encouraged them to go a certain distance, perhaps, but...

I don't know.  I'd have been a bit clearer about what it means to "lead" or at least mentioned once in this book that only Catholicism is completely right and can lead you all the way, but maybe I'm just nitpicking.

There were bumps in this particular road sign, but on the whole, I enjoyed it, and I thought it covered the subject very well.  If you don't have much time or cash, and want to understand the subject a little better, you might do well to pick up a copy.  I was pleased with it, and I'll readily admit to being a very tough audience.

The Father's Tale Awfulganza; Part 5

The Father's Tale

By Michael O'Brien

Catholic-ometer: 3 of 5

Enjoyability: 0.5 of 5

It's finally time for this review to come to a close, but before I close it, there's a couple more things I want to address.  The reactions to the book by other authors and by fans, and the problems that I had with the basic premise itself.


Issue 1; Accolades

Firstly, this book has gotten high praise from a number of well-known writers, and frankly, I'm still not sure why.  I guess I can chock some of it up to the way the author of this book mentions Catholicism a bunch.  That tends to win over some people who like to hear Catholicism mentioned.  Me, I like to hear it mentioned too, but only when it's being faithfully-represented.

The recommendation by Peter Kreeft is one that I feel needs no explanation, for reasons of my own, but the others truly annoy and shock me.  I admit, I may not completely understand the modern mind.  In my experience, modern man feels more than he stops to think, and no one can understand you if you're not going to be rational.  Still, I usually expect better than this from published authors.

If you think I'm being unfairly harsh to all the people who recommended this book, I have a proposition to make.  I'll list a few things about the book that are good near the end.  Aside from these, tell me one thing about this book which -objectively- speaks in its favor, and I'll lighten up.  For now, I feel I should debunk some of the lies spread on behalf of this book by some of these famous authors.


Issue 2; The "Prodigal Son" myth

Lie number 1 on the agenda; that this book is a retelling of the Prodigal Son in modern times.  It's not.  At all.  In the Prodigal Son, the boy leaves his comfortable home, and his rich father and hardworking brother to go waste money in some far-off land.  He then eventually repents and returns home.  In this book, the father's not rich and neither is the brother.  Furthermore, it's the father, not the son, who spends the most time in a far-off land.  This is -not- the way the story goes, and it loses its intended meaning in the process.  There's simply no way to defend the claim that this book has anything to do with the Prodigal Son.


Issue 3; Tolkien, Chesterton, Lewis, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy and so forth

It's also been said that O'brien's writing style is like Tolkien, Chesterton, Lewis, Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy.  As one who knows something of these people, let me explain why this comparison has little real merit.

Tolkien had a fascination with fabricating fictional worlds; languages and lineages of strange peoples.  He also loved to write his books as though they were real history books; a tendency which most often comes through in his battle scenes.  His greatest accomplishments, however, were in creating scenes of magical wonder and putting them on display to be enjoyed by eager readers.  The Father's Tale seems, by contrast, to have almost no imagination behind it at all.

Chesterton wrote few novels, but in the ones he wrote, he seemed to delight in creating characters to embody aspects of human existence, and having them face off against each other.  The Father's Tale does nothing of the sort.  Chesterton was also an upbeat, good-humored and amusing writer at times; especially in his nonfiction works.  In this respect, he couldn't be more different from O'brien.

Lewis is like Tolkien to the next level in many areas, while shifting the focus from minutae to more wonder and miracles.  His worlds are filled with supernatural power and strange creatures of all kinds.  Even some of his more adult works (the Screwtape Letters springs immediately to mind) contain a strong, supernatural element.  There's nothing of this to be found in The Father's Tale.

Dostoyevsky, in my view, was most remarkable in his intensely-dramatic character portrayals, and in his predictions of the future of society, and he was indeed remarkable in all those things.  However, The Father's Tale contains no amateur predictions about the future, nor any strong drama of any sort.  When its characters tell their life stories, they never do so for a dramatic reason, and when they reveal the nature of their problems to one another, it always makes them, and their problems look smaller and less significant, while the firm, dignified atmospheres designed by Dostoyevsky rarely allowed for weakness of that sort in a character.

Tolstoy I haven't read much of, because I simply couldn't stomach him.  As I see it, he's closest to O'brien in most ways, and the two share much in common, but most especially a hatred of intense drama and a passion for trying to use God's word to legitimize pacifism.  Still, one out of five is pretty bad.

I think this is the most I need to say on the subject.  O'brien should certainly not be compared with most of the people he's being compared with, and that's that.


Issue 4; Consistent failures, and their impact on a story

A huge problem with the book as a whole is simply this; the main characters are consistent failures.  Sure, it reveals their determination, but when that determination doesn't lead to victory, what precisely is the point of even having it?

As depressing as repeat failures may be in real life, they have an even worse effect on a story.  Ideally, the main character should be the person with the strongest chance for victory; the hero who eventually pulls through, despite the odds.  In some cases, heroes can be even more impressive when they have very little chance of winning, and still win.  However a hero who doesn't win is no kind of hero at all.

The effect that this has on a story is, in better cases, to make the tale essentially unremarkable, since nothing particularly special happens in it.  In worse cases, the book may come across as a total waste of time, as this book does.  The problem, you see, is that sometimes, a story fails to properly-depict the relationship between good and evil; with evil being a self-destructive path that leads, ultimately, to failure and weakness, and good being a strong, healthy path which leads to power, wisdom and a good heart.  To imply that this is not the case is to deny the existence of God and embrace naturalism.  This whole idea of "grounding" a story that's founded in Christian values simply does not serve to promote or support Christianity in any sense; because a "grounded" Christianity is no kind of Christianity at all, which leads me to my next point.


Issue 5; "Grounded Stories," and why the very idea is flawed

I truly believe that no story should be "grounded."

The idea behind being "grounded" is that the story involves nothing particularly incredible, impossible or supernatural, and conforms almost precisely to how things could happen in our own world.  This, I believe, is almost an abuse of the story format.

Stories provide us pitiful humans with the opportunity to express our dreams, fears, hopes, wishes, needs and imaginations.  It does no one any good for a story to refuse to do any of this, and that's what a grounded story is.  Stories, you see, are essential for encouraging us to think about certain aspects of ourselves that we often ignore.  When we go to work, or when we eat dinner with our family, our dreams, fears and wishes don't matter much, because we have to deal with what's right in front of us.

However, when we read stories, we train our minds to remember our futures, and what we want from them.  We remind ourselves that we are deathly afraid of certain things happening to us, and want desperately to prevent them from happening.  We also remind ourselves that there are things we want; things that this world is not capable of providing us with.

Perhaps most importantly, we remind ourselves that this world is not all there is; there is a world beyond this one; a world where dreams can come true, and where fears exist only as a sort of thrill in wondering what wonderful thing is going to happen next.  Then, too, there's the dark world; where all hope is banished, and fear and agony reign supreme.  In short, Heaven and Hell; the most basic understanding of Christian dogma.

I'll level with you.  It's been a long time since I've heard a priest talk about Heaven or Hell.  Too long, in fact, and we certainly don't talk about it at work.  Even if we happen to have the rare kind of family who likes to talk about this sort of thing over dinner, we really spend very little time dwelling on these eternal truths; much too little.  If we banish discussion of eternal, transcendant things from our fiction lives, we banish it from our lives entirely.  Our imagination dies a slow death, and then our faith does likewise.

The rest of the world can be "grounded," but if stories are "grounded," they lose the very thing that gives stories their appeal; the power to elevate the mind to higher things than those of this life.  This is the reason why I say that "grounded stories" are simply conceptually flawed.


Final Issue; The Damage Report

Ultimately, what's the damage that this book did to me?  Well, it wasted over a month of my time, for one.  I admit, I probably could have put it down at any time, but by the time I realized what kind of book it was (it dawned on me that the whole book was going to be a real snoozer by about page 300 or so,) I was already far enough in, and had invested so much time, that I figured it would be a waste not to review it, and I never review books that I haven't finished, no matter how bad they are.

In addition, there were seriously times when I wanted to throw this book against a wall.  Every time someone starts telling their life story, or every time the author tries to justify pacifism qualifies, I suppose, but I'm thinking particularly of the Yevgeny journal entries and Alex's "cryptic" story to a bunch of Russian children.  These forays had even less to do with the plot than most, and went on for literally pages and pages each.  I also thought that Alex's time being interrogated and tortured by Russians, then agonizing over the death of a kind soldier immediately after that was definitely the low point of the story.  Nothing drives home the point that your story has the wrong main character, quite like showing him repeatedly being jerked around by irrelivent side-characters, and absolutely helpless to do anything about it.

However, I feel that I should take a few moments at the end here to say what this book did right, because there were one or two things that it did properly.  It took the side of Catholic Church teaching, for example, against the evils of abortion, homosexual unions and even contraception; a rare and precious stand to take.  Still, that's no reason why you should torture yourself by reading the other 1071 pages of the book.

Some people might attack this book for being pushy with its message, or might even call it propaganda, but I won't do that, because I've read enough books, that I pretty much understand that every author has some kind of message to deliver; either by being direct about morals and ethics, or by not being direct about them.  This is also another problem that the book doesn't have.

Other than this, absolutely everything about the book speaks against it, and I suppose that's all there is to say.  I hope you enjoyed this five part awfulaganza, so until next time, God love you and stay safe.

The Father's Tale Awfulganza; Part 4

The Father's Tale

By Michael O'Brien

Catholic-ometer: 3 of 5

Enjoyability: 0.5 of 5

Now, I began by saying that this book was a vapid, boring, meandering trainwreck, and I intend to prove that to the best of my ability; one word at a time.


Word 1; Vapid

Something which is vapid is something which offers nothing original or challenging; a normal and uninteresting fare, and this book falls neatly into that category.  Alex Graham spends most of the book meeting irrelivent people and hearing their life stories.  This book goes into -tremendous- detail about every last life story it chronicles, and the worst part is that some of these could have been really cool life stories, but they never focus on the stuff that would actually be impressive and challenging to read about, like for example, there was the dead father character; Yevgeny, who's basically a radiation doctor who gets shanghaied by the Russian government because they suspect him of something, and leaves his family behind.  Sounds like a cool story, right?  Well, yeah, in theory.  The problem is, you only find out the story decades after the kidnapping/execution/whatever is already over and done with, and it's too late to do anything about it, so... what the heck?

Aglaya is another good example of what I'm talking about; spends a -huge- amount of time telling the story of her life. and what did she do with that life, exactly?  Watched her mother do a few cool things when she was a little girl, then spent the rest of her life taking care of a cow.

The problem here is that while there is sort of a spectre of things having gone wrong in the lives of many of these people, there's either no really direct contact with the source of that evil, or else, no serious hope of routing it, and either way, the outcome is the same.  If you never ran into a really serious evildoer, then how exactly is that challenging?  Because you suffered?  Everyone suffers.

On the other hand, if you did run into a serious evildoer, and just never had any real hope of stopping him/her, well... join the club.  Every single person who makes the mistake of watching the news or picking up a newspaper knows what that's like.  There's nothing seriously challenging here.

The only messages that are challenging are the extreme messages; hope and despair.  You either have hope for the ultimate destruction of evil, and the total exhaltation of man to divine purity and glory, or you absolutely despair that this will ever happen.  If you're midway between those two, you can hardly claim that your message is even interesting, much less challenging, and not one person in this book talks about Jesus finally squashing all evil and taking good people home again.  Oh, they talk about Catholicism, in a way, but not the one way that would have made one of their messages challenging or compelling.  This is why I say that this book is vapid.


Word 2; Boring

This is mainly outlined in the section on the plot, but for the moment, all I really need to say is that this book contains no serious conflicts.  Alex Graham supposes, at first, that his son has fallen in with the wrong people, and that he might even have been kidnapped, but he's never sure what's happened, and the other characters do everything they can to comfort him and convince him that nothing bad has happened to him or to his boy.  In short, to disarm any sense of tension that might otherwise have saved this story from the mess of boredom it sunk into.

Furthermore, at every stage of the story, the irrelevant subplots distract the mood further from where it ought to be, which leads me to my next complaint.


Word 3; Meandering

Midway through the story, the father takes flight after flight around Europe and Russia, trying to track down his son, but he always seems to arrive just a moment too late, and have to pick up the trail again after a lot of research and more than one botch.  In each place he visits, he also runs into an irrelevant side character, who he usually helps out in some manner.  Because he accomplishes absolutely nothing at most of his stops on his trip, the whole section feels like one long lump of filler, meandering aimlessly towards its objective -eventually.-

However, this only lasts until he gets stranded in Siberia, and the whole plot becomes one long meander; grinding to a screeching halt.  It gets jump-started again later, but goes a little too fast, rushing off in a completely irrelevant direction again, so its track record of meandering goes quite strong until Alex's son pretty much falls into his lap upon his return home.  I don't think calling this book "meandering" is anything close to a stretch.


Word 4; Train-Wreck

Lastly, this book is a train-wreck, because it fails to deliver an enjoyable reading experience.  As I said, there's no substantial conflict, no focus on the main plot, no tension to speak of, and lastly, the book offends the sensibilities of any decent person by allowing the bad guys (such as they were) to get away scott free, while the good guys (such as they were) continue reflecting on all the meaningless suffering, persecution and torture they've undergone over their lives.  Lovely.  There's no scenes of great heroism, no magnificent accomplishments depicted; by God or men, and ultimately, the story fizzles in a very unsatisfying way.  I can't imagine anything about this story that could possible inspire enjoyment or satisfaction, and that's reason enough for me to call it a train-wreck.


Of course, this only scratches the surface of the pain this book brought.  There's still one last section to get to; the premise and the reaction to this tome.  See you then.

The Father's Tale Awfulganza; Part 3

The Father's Tale

By Michael O'Brien

Catholic-ometer: 3 of 5

Enjoyability: 0.5 of 5

I've read a lot of things that were boring over the course of my life; even annoying at times, but I still didn't feel bad about recommending them, because they at least got church teaching right.  However, I'm afraid that this book doesn't quite get it right in several areas, and that's putting it mildly.


Teaching Problem 1; Pacifism

This is the most pronounced problem with church teaching that I can see in this book.  It attempts to reconcile the Catholic Church with total or near-total pacifism.  Alex is the most avid pacifist that I've seen outside of secular television, and the problem is that you can't really reconcile this with church teaching.

You see, Jesus himself wasn't a pacifist.  He drove the moneychangers out of the temple with a whip, he advised his disciples to arm themselves, and he even said "Do not think that I have come to bring peace.  I have not come to bring peace, but a sword."

Alex consistently stands by the belief that all problems can be solved with pacifism.  All I can say is; tell that to Constantine.  Tell that to Charles Martel.  Tell that to Saint Joan of Arc, and the hundreds of good and holy men who fought in the first crusade, and many of the subsequent ones, to keep Europe from being overrun by invading hordes from the middle east.  If there were anything in this book showing when violence was acceptable, in addition to when it's not, I'd be satisfied with that, but there simply is no place for pacifism in the authentic Christian worldview.


Teaching Problem 2; Martyrdom

The book's messages are as strong as they are badly-disguised, and unfortunately, one of the clearest is this; you need to be a martyr to win Heaven.  This is demonstrated repeatedly by the trials; the miseries and the sufferings, both physical and mental that Alex endures on his journey.  All well and good.

The problem is, when you focus on this to the exclusion of other methods of holiness, it belittles the white martyrdom of ordinary people, who live a kind of quiet suffering, doing their jobs and trying to convert their fellow man, but repeatedly failing.  This is the kind of life which, I truly believe, most of the faithful live.  They're not lost in Siberia.  They're not tossing themselves into freezing, cold water.  They're not being tortured in enemy prisons for information they don't have.  They're doing their jobs, and trying to live as best they can in conformity with God's will; staying in a state of grace and seeking forgiveness when they sin.  This is the really important thing; not the depth of what you suffer, which leads me to the next teaching problem.


Teaching Problem 3; Lumping suffering, love and insanity together

Alex seems to have a problem with the word "love."  He uses it a lot more than he should, in many situations that don't call for it.  In particular, he uses it incessantly when he's locked in cells and being tortured out of his mind.  That's not love.  That's madness.  Love is when you care enough about someone that you put their wellbeing before your own.  When a mother stays up until 3 in the morning, trying to get her sick baby's fever to go down, this is love.  When a soldier takes a bullet for one of his buddies on the battlefield, this is love.  When a priest drives 3 miles out of his way, despite his already-busy schedule, so that he can give last rites to a man dying of cancer, this is love.  Love is not some euphoria that you experience when you're insane, and it's wrong of this book to treat it as such.


Teaching Problem 4; "Blood dissolves all frontiers."

Oh, really?  Oh, -really?-  Does it?  So if I get my skull cut open, then all of a sudden, it's okay for me to trespass on my neighbor's property?  No?  Then this silly phrase, developed in Alex's madness-ridden cranium, needs to be shown the door.  Blood dissolves nothing.  Blood is life, as the hebrews said, and frontiers exist for a reason; to give us rights of private ownership, and to give us something to explore.  That's all I need to say on this subject.

However, that's still not the end of it, because in part 4, I'll be tackling the general problems with this book.

The Father's Tale Awfulganza; Part 2

The Father's Tale

By Michael O'Brien

Catholic-ometer: 3 of 5

Enjoyability: 0.5 of 5

I got the distinct impression that the author wanted me to like some of these characters that he'd created.  I didn't.  I didn't like any of his characters, although for different reasons.  There are two major reasons for this, and a minor one.  First the major reasons.


Major Reason 1; Certain characters were simply uninteresting.

This falls into two categories, really.  Some characters, like the bum, the prostitute, the church caretaker, Kiril, and really, Alex himself are simply uninteresting people from the start, and nothing could really be done to fix that, short of giving them development sufficient to make them interesting.  This wasn't done.

However, there's also the rare case where a character seems like they're sort of on the verge of becoming interesting, like Ilya, and Alex's emergency intervention prevents this from happening.  Joy.


Major Reason 2; Certain characters were simply depressing.

Many characters failed to accomplish anything of any value, and thus wound up being depressing.  I'm not thinking of Aglaya, exactly.  In her little world, taking care of that cow seemed pretty important, I'll bet, but of Yevgeny, the bum again, most of the intelligence agents, Alex again, and every chinese character in the story.  Ilya and Kiril probably fit into this as well, if not the entire population of their town.  Nothing really gets accomplished by anyone in this story.  Doesn't that get old?


Minor Reason; Certain characters were simply annoying.

Well, I didn't mention Aglaya in either of the first two headings, but that's because she belongs right here.  Aglaya is -the most- annoying character that I have read about in a long time, and certainly the most annoying one in this book.  She's like a cross between a jewish matchmaker, a broken record and the excitable little dog that always barks at you when you walk down the street.  Pretty much every single line she gets (with the exception of the part where she recites her life story,) is aimed squarely at hooking up Alex with Irina with as little subtlety as possible.  She even tries to claim it's God's plan.  They call her "the crow" in this story, but she goes over the same ground so darn much that I would have called her "the parrot."


Oh, yes.  The characters bothered me, alright, but that's not all.  Stay tuned for part 3; where we'll unveil the problems that this book has in its understanding of church teaching.  Until then, stay strong, and don't let the world get you down.

The Father's Tale Awfulganza; Part 1

The Father's Tale

By Michael O'Brien

Catholic-ometer: 3 of 5

Enjoyability: 0.5 of 5

You may have noticed I haven't put up that many reviews recently, and there are a couple reasons for that, but the biggest one is that I've been slowly plodding through one of the most vapid, boring, meandering trainwrecks of a book that I've ever read in my life.  So much so, in fact, that at first, I wanted to label this review "What is -wrong- with you people?"  However, rather than throw a fit over this vast tome, I thought I'd address the problems I had with it, and they are many; too many to fit into a normal-sized review.  Still, I feel that each one deserves to be addressed, because they recurr so often throughout the book, and last for so long, that I've suffered for quite some time under each, so I need to get them off my chest.  This is why I decided to do this review in a five-part awfulganza.  Without further ado; "The Father's Tale."

Now, I have a lot of criticisms to level against this book's characters and plot, but until you understand some of what they're about, the criticisms just won't stick, so that's what step number 1 is; to understand what's wrong with the plot and the pacing.


Stage 1; Slow Start

I believe some books have a right to start out slow, but this book is slow, even by their standards.  Alex Graham lives in his hometown of Halcyon, has some friends, who he trades life stories with, and for a couple hundred pages, there's absolutely no word of his son or any clue that there might actually be a main plot to this book.  I'm sorry, but that's simply unacceptable.  At worst, a story should launch into the main plot by the end of the first fifty or so pages, and be well underway by page 60.  This book seems to assume that you have literally nothing to do with your time except watch a reclusive bookseller dither around his hometown in the backwoods of Canada, talking to uninteresting characters and engaging in spontaneous, stuffy, overly-worded retrospectives.

There's a subplot about a mentally-handicapped woman who's also apparently a mystic of sorts, a subplot about two kids who almost drown in a river, and how Alex saves them and meets their mother and grandfather, and a subplot about how his friend, Father Toby, and his enemy Charles are both trying to get him to do what they want him to, but none of these subplots have anything to do with the main plot, and none of them contribute anything to it.  Furthermore, none of them really go anywhere, or lead to anything interesting happening, which is an even worse shame.  You'll find this to be a common thread throughout the book.

Finally, Alex hears cryptic words from his son that make him think his son Andrew may have become a cultist or something, but his next message from his son is cut short.  He's a very poor man, so he decides to put his house up as collateral in exchange for a bank loan and goes to where his son was last reported to be, which leads him on a chase across Europe and Russia, and leads us into the next section of the story.


Stage 2; Where in the World is Andrew Graham?

I suppose you might think that a chase by plane across Europe and Russia would be exciting.  It's not, for several reasons.  First, because Alex always seems to arrive just a little too late to really catch up to the cultists who seem to have kidnapped his son.  Second, we have no idea whether these cultists really have kidnapped his son, so any possibility of a tense atmosphere is very effectively killed.  Third, even in the rare cases where he does seem to be close to his alleged enemies, it's never completely clear just what he's supposed to do about it.

He tries to talk to them.  They blow him off.  He tries to talk to them again.  They blow him off a second time.  He tries to send them a message.  They confiscate the message and blow him off a third time.  He tries to send a veiled telephone message.  They catch on immediately and laugh in his face.  In short, he very expertly fails at everything he tries (an element I'll expand on when I discuss the characters,) and the worst part is that any reasonably-clever character would have noticed that these people didn't want to talk to him from the start, and devised a sort of trap for them.

As things are, this whole section of the book is just (1.) the cultists fly to a new city, (2.) Alex follows them, (3.) Alex makes a buffoon of himself, learning nothing from the experience, (4.) the cultists get away, (5.) repeat steps 1-4 several times.  In short, it's like a really boring game of "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego," because at least in that game, you know you're chasing a criminal, and have the authority you need to apprehend and imprison said criminal; so there's always the hope that something might actually result from the trip.  Alex lacks either of these assurances, so his trip is nowhere near as exciting, because for all we know, there's nothing at stake.

That's not enough, though.  Oh, no.  We have to slow this section down even more by including a dozen irrelivent sub-plots abou people we've never met before, and who will have no impact on this story from this point on.  Alex talks to a caretaker of an old church for pages and pages.  He's never seen again.  Alex spends several pages saving a prostitute.  She makes no further appearances in his life.  Alex spends several pages bringing an insane bum to a hospital.  Good for Alex, but not good for us, because he's never seen again, making the whole sub-plot completely pointless.  Alex spends several pages talking to a beautiful woman on the train before accidentally setting himself on fire (I'm not kidding; that's how incompetent he is.)  Well, I hope he got a lot out of that, because pretty soon, she exits the train, and the book might as well have just said "See?  Don't you love it when irrelivent characters like her deliberately waste your time?"

As slowly as this story has been moving up to now, however, it has at least been somewhat relevant to the whole "find the son" thing.  Soon, Alex's train gets stopped by terrorists (a fitting metaphor,) and he finds himself stranded in Siberia, with no idea what happened to his son, which brings us to section number 3 of the story.


Stage 3; The Story Grinds to a Halt

Here we come to one of the worst parts of the story.  You know those totally-irrelivent side-stories that we hated from part two?  Never wanted to see that kind of thing again, right?  Well, boy are you out of luck, my friend, because that's all this next section consists of.  Now that Alex is lost in Siberia with absolutely no hope of finding his son (read; getting back to the plot,) he's free to shamble into one irrelivent side-character after another.  First, he runs into some priests living in a tiny little house in the middle of nowhere.  Each gobbles up over ten pages with irrelivent backstory we don't need.  Then after getting mugged, robbed and bludgeoned with a pipe, he ends up lodging with a Russian doctor in a tiny village in the middle of nowhere.

In this new village, we have (guess what?) more irrelivent characters, with more long, unrelated backstories to trudge through.  Joy.  The doctor herself, of course, is one.  Then there's her two boys and their missing father Yevgeny, who despite being dead, manages to gobble up pages and pages of this book with his life story.  Then there's Aglaya, who only fits into this story because she's pushy and annoying, and demands her story be heard.  A long story that Alex tells to the Russian kids in that little town is even included, just in case you needed more of a reason to pull your hair out.

Oh, and did I mention that Alex stays here for months?  No joke.  He's so busy recuperating from his pipe-bludgeoning, that he has time to not only teach the kids some english and tell them stories, but build an igloo with them.  That igloo gets smashed by horsemen, though, so he builds them another, and they stand guard over it.  He also has the chance to convince the doctor's son that no matter what, he should never, ever fight over anything, but I'll cover this in part 3.  He even tries to fall in love with the doctor.  Sure, why not?  It's not like you've got a missing son to worry about.

Soon, he wanders off into the hills and stumbles across some fences with associated lights and video cameras.  Some guards with guns grab him, stuff a bag over his head and kidnap him, which leads us into stage 4.


Stage 4; The Hyperactive Jump-Start that Failed

After being abducted by security guards, Alex is taken to a Russian prison and interrogated in an irritating way.  The guards repeatedly refer to him as an intelligence agent named "Bell," and don't listen to a word he says.  This interrogation process is covered in excruciating detail.  Then, he's thrown in a cell, interrogated some more, tortured in -enormous- detail again, and put on a train, where he watches one of his guards get shot in front of him.  This bugs him a lot, even though he's totally insane by now.  He's kidnapped again and taken to China, where we repeat the same interrogation subplot as with the Russians, except thankfully in summary form, and with no torture.  It ends in him being handed over to some Americans who ship him out to Hawaii, and then guess what?  More interrogations!  Hooray!

I get the feeling that the author realized just how boring his book was getting, so he tried to jump start it.  I can't fault him for trying, but the reason this jump-start fails is that the boredom isn't the only problem this book has.  Each stage of the story is repetitive and full of expounding characters telling their own (and sometimes someone else's) life stories.  None of this changes during this stage.  Even if it did, however, it wouldn't matter, because all of this is totally irrelivent to the main son-finding storyline, and Alex becomes progressively less coherent as this section of the story proceeds, making his musings even more painful to read than usual.

Eventually, he's returned to Canada, though, where we -finally- come to the last part of the story.


Stage 5; The Ending, and Why it Was Fail

At last, Alex is home.  It turns out his home didn't get taken by the bank after all, so... good?  I guess?  Andrew is back too...  So the book lost track of the main plot for so long, it sort of... resolved itself while we weren't watching.  Major copout, but whatever.  It's almost over.  Oh, and the bad guys got away.  Yay?

There's some nonsense about how we can't solve all these problems on our own given as an "explanation" for why the author decided to let the cultists get off scott free, but... the fact is, Alex wasn't on his own.  In fact, at one point in the story, while he's being tortured, he has a vision of Jesus suffering with him, and he's very religious throughout the entire book.  What else is he missing that he still can't get the bad guys?  Never explained.

Sorry, this book has me rambling a little.  Alex's influence must be rubbing off on me, so I'd better take a break before I get into part 2; problems with the characters.