Rating: 
Summary: A bitter disappointment--
Review: After loving The Fingerpost, I raced to get Pears' The Dream of Scipio, hopinghopinghoping to have a comparable experience. I tried hard; I tried it twice, a month or so apart. But I could not lose the sense of pushing a peanut around with my nose without ever being allowed to eat it. The characters are flat; we're never sure why we're being asked to pay attention to them; the writing lurches and stutters and embarrasses itself, as in "It was a moment, he realized later, that summed up his whole existence in a tiny moment, like the world reflected in a tiny bead of water as it falls to earth" (64). Whaaaa--? Is Mr. Pears' editor asleep at the wheel? I gave up.
Rating:
Summary: Avoid at all costs
Review: After Fingerpost I looked forward to The Dream of Scipio. What a disappointment. This latest oeuvre is tedium heaped upon tedium, padding piled upon padding; a book only too easy to put down.
Rating:
Summary: Boring beyond boring
Review: Perhaps if Pears had attempted to write a novel with characters and ideas to hold the reader's interest instead of attempting a graduate thesis, this might be something one would wish to read. As it stands, it is a major disappointment, intellectually pretentious, and signifies nothing. It is also about time we stop trying to compare these also-rans with Umberto Ecco's Name of the Rose which still towers over all newcomers.
Rating: 
Summary: A Beautiful Dream
Review: What an engrossing and throughly beautiful novel. Ideas mingle with actions, history is interwoven with emotion. True enough, the novel starts out slowly, but there is intention here- the author draws you into the web of his tale. I found myself eagerly looking forward to each element of the story, layered on by sometimes achingly heart-wrenching prose. This is literature and not just another book, and the very best kind of "literature" at that- for it was such a great read.(Don't we all know the experience of reading something supposedly in those ranks and "good for us" only to be supremely bored?) How marvelous to be able to create at this level! Read this one, taking your time and then read it again.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliantly Engrossing and Thought Provoking
Review: This book is full of ideas, psychology and history. It's depiction of the relationship between Medieval Jewish Communities and the Church really hits home. It's definitely one of the best books I've read of late.
Rating:
Summary: A Big Disappointment
Review: I see that I am not the first to say what I am going to say but I wish I had not paid so much attention to the early reviewers. I don't know what book they were reading but it could not have been The Dream of Scipio. This book is a big boor. I made it to page 111 before I concluded that it never was going to get better. How could anyone have thought that this book: without clear direction (except perhaps for Classics scholars), with uninteresting pseudo intellectual characters saying pithy things,
and with three stories vying with themselves for the must tedious was worthy of more than one or two stars? Not me.
Rating:
Summary: Good idea, unsuccessful results
Review: Because of the lack of depth of the characters, this potentially intriguing story idea falls flat. Intertwining three time periods by paralleling characters from each, he seeks to play out deeper philosophical question. There was nothing convincing in how the characters were attracted to each other nor were the individual personalities interesting themselves, generating a uniform indifference to each of them. As a result, it grows more and more tedious as the motivation to keep sorting out all the convoluted threads is more trouble than it's worth.
Rating:
Summary: Dull, dull, dull
Review: Iain Pear's new book has the sound and the feeling of one of those lectures that a professor has delivered a hundred times. There is page upon page of tedious exposition. The characters never come to life. He wasn't able to disgest his research.
Rating:
Summary: Better on 2nd read
Review: This book is excellent. For the first time for any novel, I actually started re-reading it the same day I finished it. Like some other reviews say, if you are expecting "Fingerpost 2", this is not it.This story is not about events that need to be solved, but is about the motives of the people, what they believed, when, why, and how their actions changed. It is a well-balanced blend of history, philosophy, some romance (not as much as the jacket cover implies), and the choices that individuals can make. And, interestly, even though it is fairly clear where Pears comes out on the choices, the presentations of the characters were not basic black-n-white. Each character has some good reasons for what they did. And, each choice yields some results of ambiguous results. No choice yields a 100% balance on the scales of justice. From this standpoint, this is what I like best about Pears's writing. He is able to create a story that comes close to feeling real because events do not seem force-fitted to make things come out "right". Plus, he apparently does quite a bit of research to get the feel of the time right. His choices of time were also fascinating. The end of the Roman empire because it was clear that it was the end and this impacted how people reacted. The period of the Black Death when there really could be no sense of historical trend because the plague was a random occurrence, not from the actions of men. And, the German occupation of France where, in general, it was clear the Germans would lose so people could make choices toward an expected result. Each context makes certain choices potentially more reasonable than others. No free lunches on exactly what the right answers are. I plan on re-reading this again after I get through some other books that have been waiting while I spent my time with this one.
Rating: 
Summary: Brutal and Depressing
Review: Reading the first few pages of this book was enough for me. Page five offers, "Thus bagan the tale of the doomed love between he poet and a young girl that was to lead to such a calamitous and cruel ending." Life is calamitous and cruel enough without needing to tell these tales in the cold and precise way of Iain Pears. I read on because I was given the book as a gift and felt I might need to discuss it with my friend. I found the same shallowness (little character developement), interest in cruelty and lack of humanity throughout. I can certainly understand that there are plenty of people that go for this kind of writing. I am writing this review so that it may save a few kinder minds the trouble of buying it.
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