Rating: 
Summary: A difficult but brilliant work
Review: The range of evaluations for this book in the customer reviews is all the way from one star to five. Having read and thoroughly enjoyed Robert Stone's Damascus Gate, I have to wonder why the numerous one and two star reviews. The most frequent criticisms are ones that are quite true: the book is long on description, it is very complex, there are a lot of characters and much of the situation in which the plot unfolds must be inferred since the author doesn't spell it out for us.Nevertheless, the writing is brilliant. This is a book for people who love reading; not for people who simply want a good story with familiar characters and a predictable conclusion. Stone spends a lot of time in this book really setting the stage before the plot is even unwound. To readers who are impatient to 'get on with the story', this approach is going to be frustrating. But to readers who appreciate what Stone does with language and can revel in the images created, this part of the book is a pleasure in itself. I would not recommend this book to everyone. It does require more effort and concentration than a typical thriller (just as Le Carre does) and the pleasures derived from the character and plot presuppose a reader more in tune with Graham Greene than with Grisham. The author wants us to think long and hard about what we are reading and he has done an admirable job of creating a scenario where all the forces that have made the middle east a consistently unstable place are shown coming together in the crisis situation the plot leads to. I found this book very satisfying.
Rating: 
Summary: Never Comes Alive
Review: Let it be stated up front that this is a long, long book--one that ultimately does not reward the reader who makes it all the way to the end. Stone has attempted to craft work of ideas about faith and identity on the framework of a pseudo-millennial thriller (the book is set in 1992 or thereabouts), and the result fails in all areas. Firstly, there are a plethora of characters, very few of whom are developed into anything interesting, but almost all of whom have some odd background. Russian jazz club owners, Irish revolutionaries, rich Louisiana mystics, they're all here, along with the cliche cynical Western journalist to record it all. It's as if Stone wanted to create some sort of Graham Greenesque place where the flotsam and jetsam of the post-Cold War world have settled. One gets absolutely no sense that there are any ordinary people living in Israel or the Occupied Territories. Few people in this book speak like normal people, and everyone seems to be involved in some secretive group, cabal, or plot. That said, the thriller aspect of the book is a total disappointment, by the end it's hard to really care what happens. Indeed the best moments of tension come 200 pages earlier in a refugee camp on the Gaza Strip. Stone spends much more time on faith than he does actually creating any kind of interesting story, and that's where the book was a real bore for me. Much of the plot revolves around the semi-organized groups of religious weirdoes who are drawn to Jerusalem for obvious reasons. As an agnositc, it was very take any of the book's endless universalist, cabalistic, speechifing seriously. So many of the characters seem to be exceedingly childishly grasping and unthinking in their quest for spiritual enlightenment, that one is hard-pressed to care about them at all. And the central character's wrestling with his half-Jewishness is pretty stale stuff. His love affair with a jazz singer is telegraphed from miles away, proceeds enigmatically, and ends predictably. Why even bother? Indeed, much of the book seems to wander about to no purpose. Stone does provide detailed visual descriptions of people and places, but they never come alive, much like the book itself.
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.
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: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: A Total Trip
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: Incisive look at religion and politics
Review: There are a lot more negative reviews here than I expected to find. Many reviewers seem to be complaining that the book cover contains too many positive reviews, like it's Mr. Stone's fault that all those elitist, liberal, East coast reviewers liked his book. Truth be told, there were some elements in this book that were a bit irritating. Most of the characters speak in a coy, sardonic fashion that would drive me crazy if I heard it in real life. They also tend to be unconvincingly brilliant. I just haven't met too many drug abusing musicians that have read voraciously on every subject under the sun, and can quote by memory ancient religious texts in several languages, but there are a couple of characters like that in D.G. Nevertheless, the positives of the book totally outweighed these concerns. First of all, D.G. is set in a city that is constantly in the headlines, and he does a pretty good job at depicting the political undercurrents at work. While many will naturally complain that Stone wrote too favorably of one particular group or the other, I thought he was relatively dispassionate and balanced. The political action is kind of at the margins, however. Stone is more concerned with spiritual matters. I liked the idea of the main character, Cris Lucas, writing a book on religious fanatics. This gives Stone the chance to introduce all sorts of eclectic characters. Many people complain that Stone focuses too much on these "fanatics," and does not feature enough "average" Israelis. However, Stone has always written about marginal, disaffected characters, these are the people who interest him. If you don't want to read about people like this, then don't read Stonee. And not many novelists have written convincingly and intellectually on religious fanaticism. Besides, millenialism is hardly a marginal ideology in this day and age, just turn on the television and check out all of those suave evagelists urging Christians to support Israel. Stone has some very interesting things to say about this. And, while the main character, Mr. Lucas, may at times seem too "hip," I found him to be likeable and could sympathize with his spiritual plight. All in all, I would recommend this book to anybody who is interested in the Middle East and can read about political and spiritual matters objectively and intelligently.
Rating:
Summary: The novel of the millenium?
Review: Being a citizen of Jerusalem, I was impressed to see my city with no real life or ordinary people(not even one?), but populated by all kinds of crazy, misfit, junkies and people with terrible identity problems and verging on a psychotic breakdown. There is no lack of craziness and intrigue in this city, but these peole lack in depth and seem mostly unreal.
Besides, Robert Stone, seems to enjoy burdening the reader with words from several religions,slang and different places that make the novel mostly like a laberynth.
Rating:
Summary: One of America's best novelists
Review: Compared to the novels of its year, Damascus is one of the best. Poetic, entertaining, and profound, it is certainly a novel worth your time. It may not be as strong as his earlier work, but who else can write like him? As far as I'm concerned, the only writer who can beat Stone at his own game is Denis Johnson. (Stone is the better technician and has more consistency---but Johnson's flaws produce moments of genius that other writers lose through caution) Damascus is a beautiful shadow landscape that has more in common with desire and subconscious, than it does with the rational or mundane. The virtuosity with which it is told brings clarity and wonder to even the darkest corners of the earth.
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