Rating: 
Summary: This book is awful
Review: Vatican liberals plant stories in major U.S. media and portray anybody who disagrees with them as crazy assassins who'll stop at nothing to get a more moderate pope elected. Meanwhile, the book's central character (a newspaper reporter) is obsessed with sex. What a story line, what a concept! And this is the future of the Catholic Church that Andrew Greeley wants to see? How do I get my money back?
Rating: 
Summary: Burn it.
Review: While the story of the Vatican election is interesting, the work as a whole is painful to read. The love story is contrived and completely telegraphed from the start, anybody could scribble the subplot on a napkin after 10 pages. And the "action" part at the end is unbelievably trite. The right person shows up at the exact right time needed to avoid disaster and dispaches the villain with a smile and a quip to boot. It's nauseating! And one more thing: Andrew, lose the cute and perennially changing nicknames for Herself, The Princess, Her Highness, etc. etc. It just doesn't work. But then, apparently, neither did you when you wrote this abomination.
Rating:
Summary: Partly interesting - mainly trite
Review: Yes, I read it through to the end - but, while the premise may have been fascinating, the plot was dreadful.
Vatican politics are as old as the Church, but the absurd vision of a situation where a handful of radical conservatives are depicted as having no redeeming qualities, yet the entire balance of the Church is eagre to support one candidate for the papacy, is beyond belief.
If ecclesiastical politics are as old as Christianity, sex is as old as Adam. Perhaps Father Greeley could remember this, and stop creating characters who seem to think they invented it.
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