Rating: 
Summary: Book illustrates its author's talent and his limitations.
Review: Damascus Gate shows that Stone is a talented but, ultimately, not great writer whose production has been in decline ever since his best book, Dog Soldiers. Yes, Damascus Gate is well plotted, entertaining and rich with interesting historical, geographic and cultural detail. No, its characters are not fully realized, its themes say nothing that Stone has not said before (and said more convincingly), and its climax does NOT keep the reader on the edge of his seat. Dog Soldiers was a work worthy of Joseph Conrad, but most of Stone's more recent writing seems to be mostly about how erudite its author is, and Stone's fiction has always lacked a dimension that Conrad's possessed--the presence of a Marlowe to accompany his Kurtz. Stone had one terrific book in him (and Hall of Mirrors wasn't bad either), but, sad to say, he wrote it long ago.
Rating: 
Summary: this book is worth the time it takes to read.
Review: Having just finished Stone's hefty novel and read all the reviews on line, I would like to add my two cents. Yes, the story is complex, daunting, multi-layered, etc.---but every once in a while, the reader owes it to him/herself to pick up something that will really test the old brain power. (Name of the Rose comes to mind, or Incidence of the Fingerpost) Any novel that sends the reader off in search of further knowledge is a valuable addition to the library, and Damascus Gate had me checking the Encyclopedia of Religions, among other sources, in order to gain a further understanding of his plot and characters. Not a book for the beach, nor one which would welcome interruptions while reading - but one which requires constant attention to detail, and a willingness to ponder connections. The author does not spell it all out for the reader - but mental exercise isn't always a bad thing!
Rating: 
Summary: The novel of the millenium?
Review: I found this a tough read. I had to keep going to a religious dictionary to understand whats going on. The characters are shallow and unrealistic. Would you really want to be friends with any of these people? It plods along and you kind of hope that something exciting will happen. Whats the point. I would have enjoyed less characters and more in-depth ones. A good book for a cynic however.
Rating: 
Summary: Boring, irrelevant, slow, and misleading
Review: I found this book to be haunting, cautionary, and at the some time both hallucinogenic and sweetly human. It comes highly recommended, offering a unique and balanced glimpse and the confusion, misery and hope of the world's most troubled region while taking the reader on a magic carpet ride worthy of Kerouac.
Rating: 
Summary: This book gives me hope for contemporary literature.
Review: I have to admit I am flabbergasted, no: stultified, by some of the reviews of this book (and of some other books on this site, as well). Robert Stone is one of our five or six greatest living American authors (DeLillo, of course; I was going to say William Gaddis, but he, of course, is no longer with us; Cormac McCarthy; Denis Johnson...). This book is difficult, it is not easy, its dialogue and even its narrative structure are heightened and reach pitches of hallucinatory intensity, then slow down (or speed up even further) and let the characters talk to one another the way I hear people talking or trying to talk to one another all day long. Who talks like this, another reviewer asked. I'll tell you -- almost everyone around you every moment of every single day -- the problem is, most people nowadays won't listen, even to their own inner thought processes. The problem is, everyone expects dialogue in a novel to replicate the lobotomized rhythms of a television show. Robert Stone not only writes like a poet in terms of the intensity of his language and the facility of its movement and the power and depth of his imagery, but he also is one of the few working novelists out there labeled brilliant who know how to construct an old-fashioned plot (and I mean old-fashioned in the sense that it can contain anything and make sense -- by the end). The man can just plain flat-out write, and if people don't want to work hard at their art, then they should be quiet and turn on the television. The most difficult pleasures present us with the most difficulties, but they are the most rewarding. Easy pleasures are, well, they're all around us, and that's why no one is happy. We think we're fulfilling ourselves, when we're just letting ourselves off the hook. Robert Stone, I'm not embarrassed to say this (though I'm sure you'll never read this -- why would you?): I WANT TO WRITE LIKE YOU. Not imitatively, but with your spirit, restless questioning, your soul-expanding and mind-boggling sinuousness. Thanks for making me take a closer at myself, my own life, the way I'm living it, and the world around me. Everyone interested in humanity should read this book.
Rating:
Summary: Big investment, little pay-off
Review: I'd been meaning to read this book since it first appeared in 1998, so when I finally got around to reading it, I was very excited. At first I was enthralled. As someone who has always been extremely interested in middle-eastern history and politics, especially in regards to the Jewish/Palestinian conflict,I found Robert Stone's descriptions of Jerusalem and the politico-religious climate dynamic. I was immediately drawn to the characters of Raziel and de Kuff and couldn't wait to find out what they said and did next. But then, somewhere toward the last third of the novel, my interest started to wan and I had the sneaky suspicion that this was all going to prove to be much ado about nothing. The book appears to be densely plotted and multi-textured. The characters are numerous and varied to the point where the reader might start to wish they'd kept a cheatsheet from the beginning to keep track of them all. Unfortunately, with the exception of the characters mentioned above, none of them are that developed, and by novel's end they start to irritate, or rather the reader starts to search for more depth than what appears to be there. I found this especially true for the novel's central protagonists - Christopher Lucas and Sonia. Each of them appears to be in conflict with their identities, their religious beliefs (or lack of belief), and the way they are symptomatic of what is referred to as "The Jerusalem Syndrome" - intense and previously unrealized feelings of religious affiliation bordering on extremism. But while they continuously find themselves in situations that one might think would cause them to really examine their system of beliefs, they seem as shallow and, well, uninteresting as they were at the beginning. There are however some terrific nail-biting set pieces here. My favourite sequence occurs about 300 pages into the book, centered around an ill-timed adventure into the Gaza Strip. I found myself scanning ahead to find out what was going to happen next. In fact, I found this to be more exciting than the novel's climax. Not to say that this is a bad book. There is a lot to recommend. Present-day Jerusalem vividly comes across. The reader feels like he or she has actually been there. Stone is also terrific at creating dialogue for his characters - and there is a lot of dialogue, perhaps too much. I just felt for a novel of this length, the pay-off should have been more dramatic.
Rating:
Summary: Alice down the rabbit hole
Review: Never having read Robert Stone, I picked up this novel because it is fairly current in time frame and takes place in a fascinating part of the world, Jerusalem, the beginning and the end, so to speak. I quickly found myself out of my depth with phrases from other languages, concepts of philosophy and Greek gods left behind in college. But the mix of personalities and agendas was intriguing, and I let myself fall into a phantasmagoric tale of nationalities, religions and strange bedfellows in the pragmatism of politics. In a melange of extremists, fanatics, true believers and innocent bystanders, journalist Christopher Lucas immerses himself in a seething cauldron of plots and counter-plots, where one man's heaven is another man's hell. In the explosive outcome, each protagonist moves a piece on the New World game board, some better positioned than others. Lucas, as the seeking Everyman, wants desperately to believe, a product of lapsed Catholicism, which leaves a permanent imprint on the unfortunate psyche. His particular curse, however, is the ability to comprehend more than one side of an issue, which renders him an ineffectual apologist. In the end, perhaps it is Lucas whose soul is the most seared. Set in pre-millenium Jerusalem, Damascus Gate focuses the energy of the combatants in the place in the world where great religions collide: "Life was so self-conscious in Jerusalem, so lived at close quarters by competing moralizers." I was surprised at the number of negative reviews, speaking of extremes. But Damascus Gate did for me what any good fiction does, piqued my curiosity to learn more about a part of the world poised for the clash of the Titans: "Where what was above met what was below, where that which was before met that which was to come. The garden of marble fountains where death, madness, heresy and salvation were all to be found."
Rating:
Summary: What's the point?
Review: Self-indulgent and genuinely socially irrelevant. This is another of those long, "brilliant, thoughtful" books in which the author cynically chooses to wander aimlessly along the edges of (Israeli) society and then make it look relevant and dramatic by eventually throwing in some stock political action, like a terrorist bombing. I've now listened to three of fourteen cassettes in the audio edition, wondering for at least the last 90 minutes if there's any point in continuing. I like historical and political novels, well-considered mysteries and thrillers, and penetrating character studies. They don't have to start quickly, but they do have to show some depth and desire to pull me into a world that's worth being part of for awhile. I don't see or feel any of that here so far, just a lot of superficial meanderings, with outlandish rather than unique characters (to wit, the most soulful character so far is apparently bi-polar). I've recently wasted time with another book of this type. No reason to throw more good time after bad.
Rating:
Summary: What's the point?
Review: Self-indulgent and genuinely socially irrelevant. This is another of those long, "brilliant, thoughtful" books in which the author cynically chooses to wander aimlessly along the edges of (Israeli) society and then make it look relevant and dramatic by eventually throwing in some stock political action, like a terrorist bombing. I've now listened to three of fourteen cassettes in the audio edition, wondering for at least the last 90 minutes if there's any point in continuing. I like historical and political novels, well-considered mysteries and thrillers, and penetrating character studies. They don't have to start quickly, but they do have to show some depth and desire to pull me into a world that's worth being part of for awhile. I don't see or feel any of that here so far, just a lot of superficial meanderings, with outlandish rather than unique characters (to wit, the most soulful character so far is apparently bi-polar). I've recently wasted time with another book of this type. No reason to throw more good time after bad.
Rating:
Summary: Boring, irrelevant, slow, and misleading
Review: The back cover of "Damascus Gate" offers a summary of what the reader should expect to discover inside. The first two sentences of the summary are as follows: "On the cusp of the millennium, Jerusalem has become a battleground in the race for redemption. American journalist Christopher Lucas is investigating religious fanatics when he discovers a plot to bomb the sacred Temple Mount." I reached page 50 of 500 (in the paperback) and was disappointed that the excitement of the bombing plot had not yet been revealed to Lucas. I thought, "it's just got to be right around the corner." So, I kept reading. Page 75, no plot. Page 100, no plot. Page 125, no plot. Page 150, no plot. At that point, I decided that if the book is really this slow to get to the promised excitement (and the blurb on the back this misleading), I did not want to continue. I put the book down and am now loving "The DaVinci Code." Yet, deception and pace are not the only reasons I stopped reading this book. In a land filled with Jews, Muslims, and Christians, the author, Robert Stone, has managed to write a book whose key characters are a Sufi, a Jew for Jesus, and a half Jew/half Christian. Page 132 begins: "We're all mutants here. De Kuff became a Catholic, communion every morning. I was with Jews for Jesus. Sonia is a Sufi, she was a Communist." If you like a slow read about fringe personas, not particularly relevant to the struggle over the Holy Land, I recommend this book to you. However, if you are picking up this book because of your interest in the region and its people, skip it and move to the next book on your reading list.
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