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jnikolova's review
4.0
Romulus, the founder of Rome, enters an underground room in the Forum. He is old, his pulse weak, his service to the city is complete. His senators in their purple-striped togas follow him into the room, which has no windows and only one door. What follows is a classic sealed room mystery: Romulus is never seen again.
What happened to Romulus? Did he ascend? Or is it that the simplest explanation is the right one:
The senators had closed the door and stabbed old Romulus in silence, alerting none of the Forum's hyper-alert slaves. Then they knelt to dissect the body. Each senator concealed a small section of flesh or bone beneath his toga, and they carried Romulus away from the sealed room in pieces. The cuts of meat they dispersed through the city, flushed into cisterns or tossed to scavenging dogs. No trace of Romulus was ever found.
I'm honestly surprised that Acts of the Assassins has not already gathered more readers. I checked the Goodreads page and only two people have rated it so far, and a couple are currently reading it. Considering that I got the book through NetGalley and one needs to express their desire to read a book, it may be that not many have paid attention to this particular book.
They are wrong.
Acts of the Assassins is an unbelievable book, completely mind-blowing in its setting and originality. It's absolutely brilliant and completely mad.
Imagine that the New Testament never happened, that you did not believe in Jesus. Imagine that you turned on the TV today and heard about yet another mad cult, following a man, who the media makes out to be a complete lunatic. Another Charles Manson, perhaps? On the TV they say that in Jerusalem a probable terrorist cell has started working. They killed a man named Lazarus and later claimed that he has been resurrected. Then the cult's leader, a man known as Jesus, was publicly executed by the state. Only it seems he didn't stay dead either. There have been sightings of him all over the Empire. Notify the authorities if you have any information.
This book offers a very ambiguous perspective of religion as we know it and the present as it is. The Roman empire still exists in an era of computers, tracers, cell phones and airplanes. A Speculator, a cop, is sent to look for the body of a cult leader named Jesus. Only he fails. Years later he is brought back to action, as members of the cult are being killed off.
Now that you've taken a look in the premises of the book, answer to yourself, how would you feel if this happened today? I can tell you: you'd be annoyed that yet another psycho is filling the world with propaganda and religious insanity. See, it's so much different looking from a modern perspective at these Biblical events.
The narrative of the book is as original as its setting: it's highly nonlinear, in one chapter we have - the events around Jude, the ones after Thomas, after Jude, after Thomas, and then the ones surrounding Paul, which take place before Thomas. At certain points it's hard to keep up, it even seems like the author is giving out spoilers. But it's rewarding, at least as far as I'm concerned.
A book like this will probably be placed among the likes of "The Da Vinci Code", but I don't think that's where it belongs. It's all that and much more. It has a touch of mystery and a lot of thriller in it, but overall, this is a book about obsession, faith, religion. Despite the fact that many other themes were much more prominent, I think that it is exactly obsession that is the driving force of Acts of the Assassins. Each and every character has their own obsession that they project on the world around them and which clouds their judgement and makes them move, however the direction. There is action and police work and a bit of a chase too, but the core is the book's on philosophy and the moral dilemmas that the characters are faced with. There is no sugar-coating it, both the story and the language are blunt and honest and a little bit brutal, but brutality is definitely not the point of it, it's just an instrument.
Of course, I had some questions regarding the world in the book, but I think that's to be expected when one is faced with a new, made-up universe.
1. If Jesus is not part of traditional religion, which I gather is Old Testament Christianity, and He was born in a completely normal family, how is it that the idea of "immaculate conception" exists at all. It was very pointedly mentioned during the visit in the museum when the author talks about Salvador Dali's "Immaculate conception" painting.
2. How did religion develop?
3. How did the Empire survive, considering that emperor Constantine would have been blown to dust if he hadn't allied forces with the Christians to make for a stronger army? If there were no post-Jesus Christians in the Roman empire, how would it have been possible for him to win the war that they won for him?
4. How did technology manage to get developed in a world which is as barbaric and underdeveloped as the one described, technology aside. Public executions and gladiators and torture are still a thing, and we are witnesses even today to the fact that savages who give themselves over to such barbarity, are not able to focus themselves on further development of the world and pursuits of the mind.
5. How is it that America was never found? Proof to that is the fact that it's stated on multiple occasions that Scotland is at the end of the world.
My questions, however, do not lessen my love for this book. It's an amazing piece of original thinking which provoked much thought for me. I highly recommend this to anyone and everyone.
steph1rothwell's review
4.0
I did feel dubious with what type of novel I might be reading with the chapter headings. I expected it to be quite graphic but with the exception of a couple the details were minimal.
It stretches the imagination, has you thinking what affect religion and belief has in our world when events from the Bible are brought into modern day.
This is the second in a very loose trilogy, I haven't read the first book, Lazarus is Dead, but didn't feel this had any negative reading of the book.
Thanks to the publisher for the copy sent to review.
urlphantomhive's review
4.0
After Blood of a Stone, this was my second Jesus-related book I incidentally read during the Easter weekend. Although I really hadn't guessed it from the blurb. I mean, would you?
"Gallio does counter-insurgency. But the theft of a body he's supposed to be guarding ruins his career. Bizarre rumours of the walking dead are swirling, there is panic in the air, and it’s his job to straighten out the conspiracy. He blows the case.
Years later, the file is reopened when a second body appears. Gallio is called back by headquarters and ordered to track down everyone involved the first time round. The only problem is they keep dying, in ever more grotesque and violent ways. How can Gallio stay ahead of the game when the game keeps changing?
Acts of the Assassins is about one man’s struggle to confront forces beyond his understanding. And about how lonely a turbulent world can be."
I won't explain too much about it, because it is so weird I think you should find out most of it by yourself. But, being set in some kind of mash-up between the Roman Empire and modern times. Imagine gladiators, centurions and also mobile phones and aeroplanes. This book really deserves a place between the weirdest books (of at least 2015; possibly of all time) and I've been reading some weird book lately.
However, I did really enjoy it. It read very fast and was a decent detective story and besides I also thought it was quite funny from time to time. The terrible arrangement made by his organization forces to Gallio to always fly with a stop in Schiphol (the Netherlands; possibly made a deal with a Dutch airline) made me smile. Schadenfreude of course, especially since most flights are between places in the Middle East, but I thought it was a nice twist.
If you're ready to set everything you know about Roman times aside and would like to read about it as if it were modern times (It does take some imagination, especially in the beginning), then I think this is a very good book for you. It's definitely something completely different from what I (and I think most people) usually read.
Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!
arirang's review
4.0
The idea of a novel re-imagining the Gospel story isn't particularly original. Indeed Richard Beard himself did it in his previous novel, Lazarus is Dead focusing eponymous friend of Jesus (albeit in Beard's re-telling their relationship was more troubled), and this book is the second part of a loose trilogy. [Beard has suggested his third novel in the series will focus on John , set it future-day America]
Here Beard concentrates on the resurrection of Jesus and the subsequent acts of the apostles. He presents the novel as a crime story which starts, obviously, with a missing body but rapidly becomes a murder mystery. The victims are clear from the table of contents before the novel even starts: the 12 original disciples and their deaths, in each chapter title, are linked traditional, rather than biblical (except for Judas and James), martyrdom stories for each. E.g. "III JUDE shot with arrows", and with John, the only one popularly believed to a have survived to a long life, the focus of the final chapter called simply "XII JOHN". Indeed Beard seems to have used these traditions as a form of Oulipan constraint on the plot of the novel.
And the chief suspects - none other than Jesus himself, if he really didn't die.
The chief investigator is Cassius Gallo, official title "Speculator", representative of the occupying Roman forces and answerable to the Complex Casework Unit. In a nod to Beard's previous book, he is already under pressure "after the embarrassment of what happened with Lazarus. He still doesn't understand how they did that."
As this suggests, Beard's aim isn't it seems, unlike many other novelists, to give us any radically different perspective on Jesus or his own theological views. Indeed he rather seems to use the topic matter for jokes as much as anything: the first lead on the missing body is "a sighting on the Emmaus road"; “Thomas has privileged information about the health status of Jesus in the period after the crucifixion"; when interrogating the first suspect (and subsequently the first victim) Judas, Cassius Gallio prompts "a local source tells me the way you betrayed him was foretold."; his investigations reveal that none of the city's gardeners "remembers speaking to a distressed middle-aged lady on the day in question at or near the crime scene.";on Stephen's stoning "an Israeli agent called Saul set up the hit to showcase his talents". It's all a little Life of Brian.
The last example does speak to the one theological topic that the book does tackle and which becomes integral to the plot as it develops. Namely the role of Paul (formerly Saul) and the suggested difference between the version of Christianity from his epistles vs. that one would glean from the gospels alone.
He is, in this novel, the other chief suspect, a rogue former Israeli agent but now a double - or triple? - agent, Rome's "client apostle, because his version of the faith suited the requirements of an advanced nation state. Paul believed in marriage and social stability and paying taxes, solid civilised virtues...Instead of miracles he opts for conference theology with regular breaks from spiritual engagement for complimentary light refreshments...The disciples of Jesus inconvenience him. They're his competition, so the quieter the disciples the stronger the voice of Paul, and one day Jesus will be whoever and whatever Paul decides he is in his letters."
One key plot element does seem to depend on a misreading by Beard of scripture - the identity of the beloved disciple from John 21:20-22 who may remain alive until Jesus returns. Except from the bible passage we know who it isn't i.e. Peter.
The other non-standard part of Beard's novel is the "quantum fiction" approach - a term I rather dislike as the technique both pre-dates quantum physics and is not directly related to it, but one the author himself has used in interviews. In his own words
"The novel is set concurrently now and in the time of the disciples. The effect is of a historical novel set in the present – the former disciples of Jesus are working folk from Lake Galilee, but in Jerusalem they can be bundled into police cars or photographed with a telephoto lens. One of the more freakish conclusions of quantum physics is that the exact location of a particle can never be measured, and my characters exist in two different eras at once. This is partly a response to the idea of ‘eternal’. If the Jesus story is eternal then it happened then but is also happening now.
http://www.vintage-books.co.uk/blog/author-interviews/RichardBeard/
As this suggests, Beard sets his novel in an odd hybrid of the 1st Century and the 21st "in Jerusalem past and present coexist. Possibly the future too.". Again this is clear from the very opening pages when "A boy runs down an alley, a tray of loaves on his head. He dodges a rasping scooter ... Passover in Jerusalem smells like Heaven. And of burned meat from the temple. And the haze of two-stroke.". Similarly, all the images of Jesus that the investigators have to go on are "sculptures and a great many paintings, also the imprint on the shrouds", but when the investigators make a potential sighting, they can send photos via their smartphones to HQ where computers can then scan them against the pictures for a match, and send over the relevant information from Wikipedia.
Again at first this seems more for comic effect. But, as the novel progresses Beard makes the effect more interesting with past and present starting to blur. Philip dies in his own Martyrium in Pamukkale, (which was in reality constructed in the 5th Century), with pre-existing information boards explaining his death. And the Apostle Andrew follows Gallio from the UK, by a tracking device planted on his mobile phone, to a seemingly randomly chosen Greek holiday resort Patras. They meet in the Orthodox Agios Andreas Basilica, beneath "an oversized icon of Andrew the discipile of Jesus on cobalt and gold. Andrew is roped to an x-shaped cross."
And Beard uses his device to explore the topic of free will vs. omnipotence and predestination. Gallio increasingly realises that the unfolding events seem pre-destined; "everything he made happen corresponded to preparations Jesus and his disciples had made in advance". "The future is not shaped in advance," Gallio thinks, "but can be changed by willed human action. This is a core principle of civilisation as Gallio has been taught to defend it." - but the evidence is otherwise.
Beard himself is not a believer, and initially my concern was that he was mining the Gospel story for fun. But the novel does explore some important issues, sympathetically, and the closing pages of the novel: the final confrontations between Gallio, the apostle John and Paul, are genuinely moving.
sarahkomas's review
4.0
sharonleavy's review
2.0