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: Reading this is like trudging through a swamp
Review: Unless you have nothing else to do, including cleaning the gutters, don't even pick up this book. I was very disappointed with this book. The plot looked very exciting, but the book never takes hold of the reader. It trudges along painfully, boring the reader. The characters are very hard to follow, which makes the plot hard to follow. A better writer could have made this a very exciting book to read. Stone blows it big time with this book.
Rating: 
Summary: 500 pages and an unrivaled canvas, Robert Stone has failed
Review: Despite 500 pages and an unrivaled canvas Robert Sone has failed to produce a work anywhere equal to past efforts. Characters end up being one-dimensional cliches and the plot unfolds in a manner more reminiscent of a pedestrian novelist than what Stone is capable of...more of a James Michener journey of artifice than the grim, bleek regions Stone usually haunts.
Rating:
Summary: A big disappointment -- it "bombed"
Review: Based on all of the 5 star reviews, I was really looking forward to reading this book. Unfortunately, I must have read a book different from that reviewed by the others. Despite what others reviews say, the book was a slow read. The story line is fractured, fragmented and without continuity. Things happen without knowing why or how. Worse, the characters are, if you can remember them at, forgettable and are not particularly likeable. Finally, unless you know Hebrew or are familiar Jerusalem and Israel in general, you will get lost in the many words, phrases and locations that are freely spewed out and that do not come with any translations, explanations or context. Oh well, next time I'll try....
Rating:
Summary: Big disappointment -- a real bomb
Review: After all of the 5 star reviews, I was really looking forward to reading this book. What a disappointment. The plot was hard to follow, thin and choppy without any continuity. The characters were forgettable (if you could remember them at all). It took me forever to finish the book. Worst of all, one has to have prior extensive knowledge of Jerusalem, Hebrew and all of the conflicts going on because there was no explanation of anything. As a writer, with all due respect, Stone cannot carry a torch to, say, Larry McMurtry or Pat Conroy or James Clavell. I'll be sure to miss his next book.
Rating: 
Summary: Religious terrorism and ecstacy create death and life.
Review: Once Christoper Lucas ("bringer of light" is the meaning of both his names) awakens Easter morning of 1992, we get to see the inner workings of history's hottest hot spot, and the religious psyche's holy of holies. Stone succeeds remarkably in superimposing the mythic Jerusalem of Christendom, Judaism and Islam with its late twentieth century secular location of opiate addicts, religious manics, political animals and Euro-centric elites jostling for power and position. I was both delighted and terrified by the novel. It's love scences and executions all had an immediacy that created great tension in the reading. I find Stone a master of quickly drawn characters, growing narrative tension, intelligent aloofness from the world he portrays and a cutting, sharp vision into the dangerous stupidity and transcendant beauties that operate side by side and in each other's face in Jerusalem and across the Middle East. I think he also succeeds in cluing us in that it's nothing short of a grand miraculous accident that the big explosion -the really big one- somehow keeps getting delayed or avoided, even though it seems never very far away. It keeps happening instead in smaller ways, such as Raziel's relapse and beating, or Nuala's hanging, or in Lukash Zimmer's immense cleverness in bringing about both failed conspiracies and new Israeli cabinet memberships: private disasters, private victories in the millenial land of post-holocaust apocalypse. Stone both delivers and frees us to experience and to leave behind the land at the center of our world. I cannot tell you, really, how moved I was by the realities of his fiction, except to say that it seemed to reveal to me, in a way I've never quite experienced before, the fictions at work in our reality.
Rating: 
Summary: confusing with a cast like "War & Peace," yet nteresting
Review: Having lived in Jerusalem as well as in Palestine and Israel, I am astounded at the detailed and intimate knowledge the author has of Israel, and of the the religious fanaticisms ruling that place and its time. Jerusalem today feels like South Africa in the days of Apartheid, with everyone hating everybody.The most surprising evocation was Robert Stone's use of the term "Paskudniak," a Russian pejorat- ive, long out-of-usage, used in this case in the setting of a cafe for old time leftists in Jafo. It was a chiascoro illumination of a vaguely remembered landscape. Even with its impossible large cast, none of which them filled out in depth, the book held me spell- bound, mostly because it triggered so may faded memories.
Rating:
Summary: requires a broad understanding of world religions
Review: To fully appreciate this novel the reader must have a working knowledge of christian and jewish faiths and even thier eccentric off-shoots. The intracacies of these faiths is thick in the first half if not more and it was slow reading for one as ignorant as I in world religions. The good news is that it will force me to go to the non-fiction section for a primer on world religions....and maybe I'll re-read damascus gate with better appreciation!
Rating:
Summary: Hopes for high-end reading DASHED.
Review: I had hopes for high-end reading when I picked up this book. Those hopes were dashed as soon as I noticed the authors need to describe what each character (no matter how insignificant) was wearing. These descriptions commonly began with "He had on" or "He wore" or "He was dressed in". These kinds of descriptions usually come from the novice writer, who has little ability to go into the inner workings of a character, and therefore is left to give a coarse description of the outer part of the players, much like we hear at a runway fashion show from the announcer. It was definitely not what I expected from a writer who has, in the past, given us the inner soul of his thoughts and work. In addition, the story looses something in it's narrative stance. It's sad when a good plot and writer display feeble (but failed) attempts at brining the reader into the thick of it. And this book has done just that...failed.
Rating:
Summary: Thumbs down...
Review: Had high hopes for this novel but was left with overwhelming disappointment. The story sounds worthy - a plot to blow up the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Unfortunately the book doesn't work as a thriller or as historical fiction or for that matter even as literature. The locales seemed like they would be interesting - Old City Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank - places full of fascinating biblical and recent history of which I knew very little. After reading the book still know very little. The characters were cardboard and wooden. Through 500 pages of text I generated no emotion for any of these characters. Muftis, Sufis, Haredim, Shebab...an eternal list of religions, phrases, symbols, and nomenclature that goes virtually unexplained - very frustrating. The only aspect of the book that works is the depiction of the extraordinary tensions between the religions (Jews, Muslims, and Christians) in Jerusalem and Israel. That is not enough to recommend read! ing however.
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