Here is the book's blurb:
One e-mail. Five lines.
4,000 dead.
And it is only just beginning…
When a small boy in Iowa forwards a mysterious email from ‘God’ to a small group of friends, he unwittingly releases a trigger that sends blood pouring throughout his farming community.
Thousands more are dead across the country in dozens of simultaneous terror attacks and the government blames fundamentalists who want to trigger the Apocalypse.
FBI Agent Joe Unes reluctantly teams with reclusive Internet radio host Barney Ison (from Sharon K. Gilbert’s The Armageddon Strain) to expose the plot -- and discovers that he's not contending against flesh and blood.
Our general summary is Christian thriller in which unsuspecting every-day Joes and Janes find they are immersed in a world-gone-mad struggle between the forces of good and evil. Will we all be cannon-fodder and mindless sheep, and therein victims, or shall we rise as one and fight the fight for freedom?
NARRATION: Mr. Gilbert elects do do his own solo-read. His voice is pleasant and he is at ease with the microphone so his voice tells the story, as opposed to us listening to someone read a line of text. There is a local-news-weekend-anchor quality to Mr. Gilbert's voice. That is to say, his voice is middle-of-the-road-upper-key bland, but this quality was over lookable once we bought into the story. We will award 14 points in this category.
Editing/Technical: Run-of-the-mill, we would surmise. There were, the Mr. Gilbert's credit, not searing gaffs. A few bad splices were left in, but nothing egregious. We fully concur with commentators on PB.com the the intro/outro music was jarringly loud. As this is an easy fix, even now, it is hard not to ding points for this annoyance. A pale 11 here, where the unspectacular is coupled with the offensive.
Originality of Story: This is, for us, a bit of a tough one. We are not very familiar with the Christian apocalyptic genre. It is possible this is a very fresh and original story. We suspect there exists a large body of such stories and that this is a common enough tale. We made it though five or six pages of the mind-numbing Left Behind series ( to quote Dr. Smith from Lost in Space "Oh, the pain!"). Well, it's original to us, little fish in the big pond that we are, so that counts for something. Based on our vacillations, we will score a neutral 10.
Quality of Writing: As we've said - time and again - it's all about the story. The mix of writing prowiss, deeply developed characters, and an enthralling tale are the stuff of magic. Well, have a seat, pour a cold one, and be patient with us, we are going to set our soap-box right... here... and lecture a bit, expound upon our opinions, as it were. Forever void of malice in our hearts and in our pens (keyboards keys sounds too sterile, so, please pens it is), we wish to drill a bit deeply into TGC. The characters are, lamentably, two-dimensional, off-the-shelf kind of folk. The preacher who prays cheerily (we were reminded of Ned Flanders cheery) while death is quite literally on the door step (maybe run now, pray later?) and the treacle-flock of loving white husbands who cannot stand to be apart from their wives. The couples all love each other as much now as the day they first met. They are all white, too, except for a token Asian wife. The black football player with a son raised by his single mother ex-girlfriend. Ah, does anyone sense a rigid stereotype here? Moreover, the black single mother is an unreasonable bitch. When her ex is called to active duty in the setting of a world gone mad, she is pissy about her plans and won't allow a visit. She is the only negative character in the book who is not one of the bad-guy. Very thin ice here, Mr. Gilbert, very thin indeed. And, when all the world is threatened and The Common Man unites to defeat the beast, no common man is gay. We have written several novels and short. We think we only have one cameo-type gay character, but includcivity was not a central theme for any of our books. It very much was in TGC. Moreover, when you write Christian fiction, if you don't add a LGBT character, we think you are declaring your uncharitable opinion as to the right of consenting adults to do as they choose behind closed doors. And each character acted exactly as you anticipated. We read a few comments on PB.com before starting TGC and noted someone was surprised by the ending. Really, we saw it half way through with clairvoyant clarity. The stark predictability of the climax were not so onerous as to earn a WSRH, but a little imagination peppered in would have been nice. After you've read TGC, or if you are Mr. Gilbert, splice-in this example. Cut to the scene where the FBI agent and deputy trap the Special Ops in the house. The captain comes out, nervously faces the agent, then asks the whereabouts of the deputy. She steps forward and punches him in the nose. What if... instead of that, she recognizes him. They served together in Afghanistan, fell in love, but duty tore them apart. She has not seen him since - lost track of the ghost warrior. She insist on going with the captain to confront the bad guy. When the bad guy *spoiler* she pulls the crucifix the captain gifted her at their parting, which she later had the Pope himself bless while she was visiting Lourdes, and the sanctity of the amulet, when impaled into the *spoiler* eye causes the *spoiler* to *spoilered* into *spoiler* for some unpleasant time. You see our point. It is not difficult to enrich a story, to multi-dimentionalize a character, so as to tell a more non-linear tale.
All that said, we enjoyed TGC, in spite of it's devote simplicity. For writing, we will aware a bland 9.
Wow Factor and Extra Credit: We will award 5 points here, mostly to acknowledge the effort it takes to write and produce a podcast, and the generosity to do so with only a hope of recompense. Study, practice, and call-upon your imagination, Mr. Gilbert, and afford us these thing next time out.
TOTAL: 49 Yes, this is the lowest rated podcast so far, but, know this. It stands head-and-shoulders above the debris of WSRH'S who never even made it to the dance. Seriously, this is a worthy podcast and you should listen to it.
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