I have no idea why I put this on my Bookmooch list – possibly as a mistake for Janet Soskice’s Sisters of Sinai – but it arrived last week. It’s a rather pale reflection of Illuminatus! and Midnight’s Children, set in and around the Holy Land (the original, not the district in South Belfast) in the early 20th century. Extra coloration of various characters’ background is brought in from Cambridge University, Albania and Ireland, none of it very convincing in detail (bad luck I suppose that I know all three of those locations reasonably well). The main strand of a confused plot concerns an ancient Biblical manuscript which supposedly disproves everything in both Old and New Testaments. (*rolls eyes*) The writing is not as funny as the author obviously thinks it is. It filled out the spaces for me while travelling and that is the best I can say for it.
Robin McKinley’s THE BLUE SWORD is one of my all-time favorite books. Desert island book. I cannot, however, promise that it will have the same impact on a 40-something man as it did on an 11 year old girl. 🙂