The Harbinger

This has some spoilers!

If this was a non-fiction book sharing the similarities between the fall of Ancient Israel and the major events affecting the U.S., I'd probably give it a 4. Spoiler alert: there were many and they were really interesting.

It's a 2 only because of how interesting the information was. The actual story was so hard to read. It was an afterthought, something to wrap all of the information in. This guy gets handed a series of clues, wanders around for weeks or months with each one until the guy that gave him the clue (aka the myserious prophet) shows back up to tell him the answer. This happens over and over. Luckily there's a slight bit of progress in that with the last few he actually reads some things and gets help from others (and still gets them wrong.) Books like The Da Vinci Code have stories that could stand on their own but also shove in a bunch of art and religious history. I'm not a book snob and I'm not an academic and even I felt insulted by using the story as a mask. The author even tells you he's done it near the end.

That said, I didn't stop reading it for 2 reasons: first, the information about the two was very interesting. Second, my dad had recommended it (on top of it being on my wish list) and I wanted to be able to talk with him about it.

The only way to read this book is to completely remove the characters as you go and focus on the long shares from the prophet.