Rating: 
Summary: Great Book
Review:
I am just lost of word to describe this book. It is one of the best book I read in my life. Even with the known ending the character building the dialemma and the story development is just extra ordinary
Rating: 
Summary: A read of biblical proportions
Review: David Maine's first novel is a thought-provoking, fresh twist on one of mankind's oldest stories. As a casual but curious Christian, I was a little apprehensive about picking up a religious book, but I was very pleasantly rewarded. Maine brings Noe [Noah] and his family to real life as a bunch of regular people struggling with day-to-day tasks, responsibilities, and fears while fulfilling their monumental undertaking. The story is not sugarcoated in any way; each character gets a chance to speak through their own chapters complete with uncensored remarks, observations, and musings.
This was a quick and easy read, and I find myself hurrying through the pages to find out what happens - even though everyone knows how the story turns out. Maine's storytelling is simple, yet creative and as realistic as it can get for a very unrealistic situation. At some points you can actually visualize the Ark with hundreds of birds perched on its rails, the deck covered in you-know-what. Good book, and even better given that it is the author's first novel!
Rating:
Summary: A Great Read
Review: I found this book a very enjoyable one. Maine portrays Noah as a real person with a real family and real decisions to make. I would recommend this book to anyone who just wants a good read!
Rating:
Summary: Thought provoking
Review: I thought this book was incredible with it's harsh reality and ability to make the reader question what how the Bible should be interpreted. Admittedly, I am unsure of my own beliefs as far as religion goes, but I am very sympathetic and empathetic. There is definately a line between the faithful and unfaithful, but this books makes the reader question what it is that makes someone faithful or not. Noah exhibits his own sinful behavior through some of his actions and yet he is saved. What is it that really distinguishes him from everyone else? What makes him any better other than God talked to him. God could have talked to anybody, why him? There were those who had done nothing, had shown no sinful behavior but they were killed anyway and yet Noah's family showed signs of sinful behavior and they were saved. It makes no sense to me. Where is the fairness in that?
Overall, this books is a great example of unbreakable faith, which is good for everyone to witness. Maine has a way of making it real rather than a fable in the Bible. His creation of characters was deliberate and insightful, with each character playing their part in one of the oldest stories of all time.
Rating:
Summary: a fun book, definately worth it
Review: i would definately reccommend this book. it is well written, has good character development, it is a quick read and quite interesting. i liked how the story is told from each character's point of view. it raises some interesting questions and makes you think, if you feel like it, or you could just sit back and enjoy the story for itself. i know it is fiction, but it is quite plausible, and the subject of noah and the ark is an interesting platform for a story.
Rating:
Summary: Just read it!
Review: In The Preservationist, David Maine takes one of the Old Testament's most fanciful, seemingly allegorical episodes and brings it kicking and bleating to life. Maine takes the story of Noah's ark and dares to fill in the gaps, rendering the logistics of Noah's (or Noe's) feat surprisingly credible while grounding the narrative in fresh, earthy detail. What ultimately makes this novel more than a precarious literary stunt is Maine's deft characterizations--the women, in particular, inject the tale with sly resourcefulness and dry wit. The Preservationist is darkly funny and often irreverent, but its timely themes (which address family, faith, and the very meaning of life) pack a deceptively powerful punch.
Rating:
Summary: A Book for the Non-Believer as well as the Believer
Review: Noe, at six hundred years old, while out searching for a lost lamb, has been chosen; his God, Yahweh, has come to him in a vision and instructed him to build a boat and to prepare for a deluge.
Noe, with his wife, must gather his sons together; the oldest Cham and wife, Ilya, Sem and his wife Bera and the youngest Japheth with Mirn. They must build a very large ark to hold two of every living species that they can collect, store provisions before the rains start and be ready for a very long voyage.
This first published novel by David Maine is different. Different is good. Therefore, this book is good. However, it is much more - it is a readable, if not a familiar bible story, told in a very familiar style for the 21st century. To explain his reference material, the author notes that "Quotations are taken from the 1914 printing of the Douay Bible, translated by the English College at Rheims in 1582 and first published at Douay in 1609. All names are spelled as in that edition." The reader is right there, inside each character's head, as the trials and tribulations unfold. What are these people feeling? Living at such close quarters, young and old, animals, insects, reptiles and humans, they experience many emotions. The author reveals to the reader what he thinks would be overwhelming the immediate family members in this confinement, especially the feelings toward Noe. During the early part of the voyage, Ilya imparts passionate insight in a modern colloquial reflection:
"To be honest, when the rain started I was shocked. I had supposed my father-in-law to be something of a crackpot, though admittedly a compelling one. I never expected him to be right." The morbid conditions of imprisonment in the boat during the deluge "...collecting buckets of dung from the holds" the dangers of firing a cookstove so that "Noe shudders: one solid wave would pitch those coals into the tar...", the foul air, "...the relentless swinging of the boat..." are the no-holds-barred style of Maine that makes his telling of this story so vivid. Sem is delighted that after six months "Just like that the clouds start shredding, sky showing through. I swear I had forgotten what blue looked like, but there it is. I start crying then. We all do." The boat settles into mud and silt. Noe ventures out and on his return commands the family set about releasing the cargo. A marvelous and picturesque representation by the author of what happened next: "The animals bolted, a snarling, trumpeting host. Elephants squelched knee-deep in marshy soil; big cats slunk away like sinners; buffalo and wildebeest lumbered off. Giraffes ambled, zebras trotted, wolves darted. Rhinos stepped carefully, shortsightedly, like old people." How could a reader not be enchanted by Maine's words, believer or not?
After a year at their settlement, the human and animal population has thrived and increased; life is good. Noe, while walking in the hills receives another message from Yahweh, his God. Noe is to send his sons and their wives out into the world to explore, settle and populate. The sons and wives have matured and become settled in their ways, but they heed their father's wishes and prepare to leave. Mirn, the wife of Japheth, who was thought to be the immature and brainless one, has obviously grown emotionally and intellectually. She muses and predicts to Japheth:
"Of course people will tell something, it was the end of the world after all. A story like that won't be forgotten. But things will get added and left out and confused, until in a little while people won't even know what's true and what's been made up". Even those of us who are Christian non-believers will be charmed with this telling and with the style of the author David Maine. A small book in size but even the jacket design and cover by Jonathan Bennett is creative and adds to the originality of the presentation and the contents.
Rating:
Summary: fast spare read, strong variety of voices, good close
Review: The Preservationist is a slim, spare book, under 250 pages. Making the book seem even slimmer is its structure, which divides those 250 pages among several different narrators, each given several small chapters to tell their own stories, each of which furthers the larger narrative. The language is equally sparse, with very few moments of lush description or effusive narration. The story is carried along with a stripped down language for the most part, this self-imposed limitation making the variety of tone and voice all the more impressive.
The story is a retelling of Noah and the ark, and so its spare quality is subject appropriate. It is, after all, the story of destruction and post-destruction, so perhaps lush flights of linguistic fancy aren't really called for here. And the language, bare-boned and flinty, certainly matches most of the characters as well: stern, aged Noah following his lord's commands; Noah's resigned wife, who wonders at those who both with something as harmful as hope; Noah's several sons and their wives, each of whom has their own personality, their own quirks, their own problems with Noah or another in the family. The brevity of the work also makes sense from sheer logistics; after all, much of the "action" takes place on a single sea-stranded vessel carrying only a handful of people. This is no "Love Boat" with a potentially limitless rotating cast. It isn't even a Gilligan's Island, where despite the fact that the castaways could never find their way off the island, somehow every week new characters found their way on. When Noah and his band finally do strike land, they remain the only characters the author has to work with (excepting the few small children, none of whom offer much in the way of plot complexity or movement). Even the weather doesn't offer much in the way of plot extension (rain, rain, and umm, rain).
All of which means that while the book is spare and slim, for the most part if feels utterly complete. One doesn't feel Maine scanted the reader on characterization or plot. If one wants more, and there were times I did, it wasn't for purposes of plot but of character. These are such strongly realized characters, with such individual voices and personalities, that it would have been a pleasure to have stayed longer with a few or to have come back more often. It's difficult to see where Maine might have done this, as the book does as mentioned feel nicely whole. Perhaps more introspection or flashback while at sea, perhaps a few flash-forwards after the landing. But this is a minor complaint in comparison to the book's strengths.
The multiple narrator structure works quite well throughout, offering different perspectives to same events or fleshing out some side-stories. The sections move smoothly one to the other and are well-balanced; there are no rough transitions, no sense of being bogged down in one area. And as mentioned, each narrator is a strong, fully vivid character; it would be easy to imagine any of them carrying the same story as a single narrative voice.
The plot is familiar--beginning with Noah's tasking and continuing through the construction of the ark, the flood, the landing, the dispersal of his sons. Noah is a complex character as presented through his own voice and through the multi-faceted lens of the others', some critical, some not. The family dynamics add tension and interest throughout, as do the varying backgrounds of the sons' wives. In fact, though all the characters are good creations, the book's strongest characters are probably the women (something that some of the men realize within the book, or at least learn).
Bringing the more general and overly-familiar story to life are the myriad of tiny details so well-crafted throughout the book's entirety. Once or twice there may be a sense that Maine glosses to easily over one of the more problematic points of the Biblical story or tries too hard to fit a familiar point in, but these are rare problems that come quickly, go quickly, and are soon forgotten.
The book, if anything, strengthens as it goes on, as the characters change and/or deepen, and whether true or not, I had a sense the language also deepened or elevated itself. The closing is particularly strong, not just a fitting ending but also a moving one.
Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: A rutting good book
Review: This is a book you can judge by its cover. It's the most beautiful design and creative two-in-one book cover I've seen. It was worth buying the book just for the exterior art.
The good news is, the story inside lives up to the great cover. The author puts the reader right there with Noe (Noah) and Co. before, during, and after the world's greatest (super)natural disaster. It's a memorable ride.
Rating:
Summary: Simply a great read
Review: This is a remarkable first novel. Let's be frank -- it's a remarkable novel. Art does not need to do this, but Maine has written a work of art that invites its reader to become better, to understand the world more, for having read it.
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