Author: Luke Gracias
Genre: Religion, Thriller, Suspense
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
The Devil's Prayer feels like it is three separate books with a couple chapters of a prologue. My 'parts' do not line-up with the parts defined in the book. Here are my three breakdowns of this book:
1) The first part is a grusome thriller novel. Including every trigger ever; from suicide to torture to murder to moral ambiguity. This section is done by our main gal reading journal entries. It's well written and compelling. I often find journal entries to be a bit dull and an easy way for writers to trick us or leave out important details but that was not the case here. This was easily the best part of the book; and yet also the most disturbing. Be warned it's very horrifying.
2) The story of a deal made with the devil, and not how the deal was made (as that is covered in part 1) but instead of what happens after you make a deal with the devil and follow-through. It also includes our main gal fleeing across the world. Here is where things start to feel the most 'Da Vinci Code'-esque as we learn (from more journal entries) that there are secrets in the church that have been hidden for centuries. This is all interesting enough and was shaping up to make for a really stellar ending.
3) Then we are told the a duller than dull story of how a man came to be involved in the church and know many of these secrets that are discovered in part 2. Super boring! This is set-up to also give us all a lecture about how we are ruining our earth and the Devil is winning. And I honestly couldn't have been more bored or irritated by the lecture.
Then, like the couple chapters prologue, there is a couple chapters of 'wrap-up'. Except for the part where NOTHING HAPPENS! There is no climax, no plot points and literally the book ends when it feels like there should be another 200-300 pages of plot and story. This is beyond frustrating to me and makes me wish I hadn't read the book at all. It's that annoying.
For a book to go from amazingly face-paced and engaging to as dull as a history book written in ancient text to no ending whatsoever is so odd. So if you want to read a book about how to NOT set-up a story. This is a good one to read and be very critical about. Otherwise, I suggest you don't waste your time.
I am giving it two stars because the first part is so well written and would make an amazing novel on it's own. But otherwise it's not worth reading this book.
Please note: I received an eARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. This is an honest and unbiased review.
1 comment:
That sounds so frustrating, and after reading your review I'm suprised how many people on GR rated this highly and apparently loved it...sadly, you also got my intrigued by describing that first part of the book, so I'm not entirely turned off of reading it myself!
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