The Brothers-Review

The Brothers

(The Great and the Terrible, Volume 1)

By: Chris Stewart

(This is my original review from January 15, 2007.

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This book came highly recommend by a great friend so I decided to bump it up on my reading list and tackle it and it’s sequel over the Christmas break. Once I start a book, I finish it, yet I’m still astonished that I made it to the end of this book. There were several times I told myself I was through but for whatever reason I kept picking it up.

The book is written to illustrate the war in heaven, and it’s sequel to illustrate how that war continues to wage here on earth. It’s sounds interesting enough but really it isn’t. I felt like the author must have been suffering from Alzheimer’s because every time a character made an appearance (whether he’d introduced them already or not) he  would reintroduce them and drip over mundane details. Basically the story wasn’t thick enough to fill the 224 pages so he repeated detail that had no bearing on the story, and he did this over & over. Some people call it character development….I say a 145 pages of character development is too much.

The last 79 pages were ok and raised a few thought provoking questions but none profound enough to remember and share with you here. I could be dense; I’ll admit that, it’s possible that I just didn’t “get it”. I just never came to understand what the huge temptation was to side with Satan. It seemed to me that anyone who fell pray to Satan’s plan was just incapable of any thought whatsoever because if just one neuron fired in your brain you would know that there really was no question as to which plan was better.

So that’s my take. Again, I’ll admit I could have just been bored by the mundane detail, and could have just missed the point. Perhaps this book really is terrific but I doubt it. If you think otherwise, you will have to put together a strong case to convince me otherwise.  I did not read the sequel, and I probably will not ever read a book by this author again. I also will NOT recommend this book to anyone.

This book has inspired me to move C.S. Lewis’s “Screwtape Letters” up on my must read list. I found it interesting that the Screwtape Letters also has 224 pages. Hopefully it is more insightful than this.

I give this book *½ a star-My lowest rating. (like I said, it made me think of something at one point, but I just don’t remember what it was….oh Yeah!!!…Oh….nope that wasn’t it)

*Indicates that the book was rated before February 2008 when I implemented the use of my book-rating calculator.