God Is a Bullet

Rating:
Summary: Unique
Review: A murder, kidnap, revenge tale that is disturbing and nightmarish. You won't forget these characters.

Rating:
Summary: Try not to grimace...
Review: Boston Terran's writing is a little over the top at times, but there is no denying that the story will grab you and drag you along with it. At various places in the book, I found myself... wrinkling my nose because I expected the stench described to hit my nose... Sitting with my legs pressed together--to keep the bad guys away from me!... and swallowing (and spitting!) repeatedly to get the foul taste out of my mouth. Believe it or not, I loved it! This is one is definitely a keeper, and I have recommended it to all my friends. But they'll have to buy their own copy!

Rating:
Summary: An incredible first novel
Review: God is a Bullet is an incredible piece of work! Teran had my rapt attention from the first page through to the end -- he has a talent for growing memorable characters from unlikely material. Applause, applause! This book is an outstanding debut; a halogen light in a room full of dim bulbs. It has blockbuster written all over it - people who loved Harris's Red Dragon will love God is a Bullet, and the echoes of Charles Manson's real-life crimes are chilling. This book is a real winner. Thanks so much for giving us a preview. It was a blast to read. I always want to shout out loud when I find a keeper!

Rating:
Summary: brilliant and grim
Review: Heart of darkness stuff. Gives a face to evil and struggles to overcome it.

Rating:
Summary: Highest Praise for Haunting, Gut-Wrenching Noir Masterpiece
Review: I fear one of the other reviewers sadly missed the point of this impossible-to-put-down thriller. While It is easy to quibble with tense and word choice-in almost any book-it is very difficult to miss the artistry and truly unique voice of this amazing book. It is dark and haunting, filled with passages that stay with you into the night, characters that are both monstrous and only too real... and a plot that screams (wholly and totally believable) California crazy. This book hits the darkness from the get-go and never lets up. It isn't for the squeamish nor, evidently, the scholarly... but for anyone looking for a truly well-written ride into the nasty depths of human darkness and depravity, this is it.

Rating:
Summary: Probably the best book i will read all summer
Review: I knew i was onto something special when i picked this up after hearing the reviews. So i saved it up, and took it on holiday with me.

And i whizzed through it like lightning. This is a superb book, among the best i have ever read. the plot is brutal and violent, but not without a certain amount of blunt compassion which glimmers like the hope it also carries, dangerously close to being snubbed out. His prose is beautiful and addictive. It shoots into the veins like a drug and pulses in your head. the landscapes it describes are vivid and utterly compelling. I dont think i have read such dark prose in all my life. It drags you under like an invisible current, and wont let you let go of the story, or it of you.

He is the master of metaphor. He raises this sometimes simple literary device to an art form.

The characters are likeable despite their flaws, and you will them along on their quest, hoping the suceed even against the odds, and against an almost pure evil. They are biting and drawn sharply. And even after we finish the book, we still find out that we don't really know them...

The plot is simple, but moves at brilliant pace and keeps those pages turning (although the prose alone could do that.) like the wind blowing them.

The conclusion is exciting and action packed, it moves with all the seeming choreography of a hollywood movie.

This is a quite brilliant book. The California feral desert wastelands brood and make the book sear. I cannot wait until i get to read his next. This was the debut of one of the best writers working today.

Rating:
Summary: Why I didn't read _God Is a Bullet_
Review: I picked up _God Is a Bullet_, and I enjoyed the first paragraph, which is sparely and unusually constructed, if not above criticism. The second paragraph is bad, the fifth is an utter disaster, and I threw the book aside early in the eighth. Here's why.

In paragraph two, we read:

"They drive without sirens through Barstow, passing the ghost mining town of Calico, all clapboard and tin just north of the freeway."

"Passing" should have been "and pass"; as it stands, the text implies that Calico is inside or right next to Barstow. But it isn't -- it's maybe eight or ten miles from town and a good two miles from the freeway. (And "ghost mining town" -- hmmm.) Sloppiness of language and error of fact is a bad omen this early in a book that seems (already) to pride itself on language and detail.

Here's paragraph five, complete:

"The wind grows worse, blowing its poisonous alkali chlorides and carbonates down from Inyo County and China Lake. Moving up through the Mojave Desert they pass the Calico Early Man Site, where scattered on the shores of ancient, dry Coyote Lake are the oldest known remains of our ancestors in North America. Here a solitary core of studied diggers found rudimentary tools of stone and arrows, fossilized fletchings, and puzzle parts of clay jugs. The crude trappings of commerce, the crude trappings of war."

The first sentence is all right, I guess. But then, who are the "they" who move up through the desert and pass the Early Man Site? The most recent candidates for an antecedent are "chlorides and carbonates", but one suspects, without really knowing, that "they" refers to the sheriff's deputies. Putting aside a passing doubt as to whether the human remains at Calico are actually "scattered on the shores" of Coyote Lake (which would seem to imply careless stewardship by the managers of the Early Man Site), and another doubt as to whether Teran really meant "remains" (as opposed to, say, "artifacts"), one pauses puzzled on "our ancestors". (Is Teran, are his readers, descended from the Early Men who lived at Calico? Should he maybe have written "predecessors", or simply "the oldest known human remains in North America"?) And about this "solitary core of studied diggers" -- where to begin? Why did it take diggers to find things "scattered on the shores"? And a "core" of diggers -- what's that? (Did Teran mean "corps", maybe?) If there were several diggers, they're not really solitary, are they? (Or is it their core that's solitary? What's a solitary core?) And "studied"? Surely it's the Early Men who are studied, and the diggers perhaps "learned", or "studious". "Rudimentary tools of stone and arrows" needs some editing, or thought. And what could "fossilized fletchings" possibly be? Fletching is the act of feathering an arrow, not anything that could be fossilized. Alliteration should embellish sense, not replace it.

In paragraph six, we find:

"Their vehicles rock and heave over the sifting climb of slow dunes."

While this sentence is kind of cool, the adjectives are spooky; and by this time I'm inclined to think Teran just likes the sounds of all these words, regardless of their meanings.

Paragraph seven. The boy's

"legs arch onto the seat in an almost fetal position."

I'll bet Teran doesn't mean "arch" -- your legs aren't "arched" when you're in a fetal position, they're bent or flexed --, and surely it's the boy whose position is "almost fetal", not his legs'.

The eighth paragraph begins:

"The blowing sand is like cut glass against their skin."

Like so much else on these pages, this sounds all right until you think about it for a moment. But in what way is blowing sand like cut glass? If this means anything, it has to mean that the blowing sand against their skin feels like cut glass; but that's absurd. (Find some cut glass -- a decanter or something. Brush it or press it against your skin. Does that feel *anything* like blown sand? No.) My guess is that the writer began with a thought something like "The blowing sand cut their skin", considered that glass cuts skin, inverted the words into "cut glass", and voila`, a meaningless but wordy metaphor.

At this point, I was halfway down the second page of the book, it was looking like a really long evening, and I hadn't read any Chandler for weeks. So I chucked Teran like pre-stressed besoms of glittering concrete.

Rating:
Summary: Why I didn't read _God Is a Bullet_
Review: I picked up _God Is a Bullet_, and I enjoyed the first paragraph, which is sparely and unusually constructed, if not above criticism. The second paragraph is bad, the fifth is an utter disaster, and I threw the book aside early in the eighth. Here's why.

In paragraph two, we read:

"They drive without sirens through Barstow, passing the ghost mining town of Calico, all clapboard and tin just north of the freeway."

"Passing" should have been "and pass"; as it stands, the text implies that Calico is inside or right next to Barstow. But it isn't -- it's maybe eight or ten miles from town and a good two miles from the freeway. (And "ghost mining town" -- hmmm.) Sloppiness of language and error of fact is a bad omen this early in a book that seems (already) to pride itself on language and detail.

Here's paragraph five, complete:

"The wind grows worse, blowing its poisonous alkali chlorides and carbonates down from Inyo County and China Lake. Moving up through the Mojave Desert they pass the Calico Early Man Site, where scattered on the shores of ancient, dry Coyote Lake are the oldest known remains of our ancestors in North America. Here a solitary core of studied diggers found rudimentary tools of stone and arrows, fossilized fletchings, and puzzle parts of clay jugs. The crude trappings of commerce, the crude trappings of war."

The first sentence is all right, I guess. But then, who are the "they" who move up through the desert and pass the Early Man Site? The most recent candidates for an antecedent are "chlorides and carbonates", but one suspects, without really knowing, that "they" refers to the sheriff's deputies. Putting aside a passing doubt as to whether the human remains at Calico are actually "scattered on the shores" of Coyote Lake (which would seem to imply careless stewardship by the managers of the Early Man Site), and another doubt as to whether Teran really meant "remains" (as opposed to, say, "artifacts"), one pauses puzzled on "our ancestors". (Is Teran, are his readers, descended from the Early Men who lived at Calico? Should he maybe have written "predecessors", or simply "the oldest known human remains in North America"?) And about this "solitary core of studied diggers" -- where to begin? Why did it take diggers to find things "scattered on the shores"? And a "core" of diggers -- what's that? (Did Teran mean "corps", maybe?) If there were several diggers, they're not really solitary, are they? (Or is it their core that's solitary? What's a solitary core?) And "studied"? Surely it's the Early Men who are studied, and the diggers perhaps "learned", or "studious". "Rudimentary tools of stone and arrows" needs some editing, or thought. And what could "fossilized fletchings" possibly be? Fletching is the act of feathering an arrow, not anything that could be fossilized. Alliteration should embellish sense, not replace it.

In paragraph six, we find:

"Their vehicles rock and heave over the sifting climb of slow dunes."

While this sentence is kind of cool, the adjectives are spooky; and by this time I'm inclined to think Teran just likes the sounds of all these words, regardless of their meanings.

Paragraph seven. The boy's

"legs arch onto the seat in an almost fetal position."

I'll bet Teran doesn't mean "arch" -- your legs aren't "arched" when you're in a fetal position, they're bent or flexed --, and surely it's the boy whose position is "almost fetal", not his legs'.

The eighth paragraph begins:

"The blowing sand is like cut glass against their skin."

Like so much else on these pages, this sounds all right until you think about it for a moment. But in what way is blowing sand like cut glass? If this means anything, it has to mean that the blowing sand against their skin feels like cut glass; but that's absurd. (Find some cut glass -- a decanter or something. Brush it or press it against your skin. Does that feel *anything* like blown sand? No.) My guess is that the writer began with a thought something like "The blowing sand cut their skin", considered that glass cuts skin, inverted the words into "cut glass", and voila`, a meaningless but wordy metaphor.

At this point, I was halfway down the second page of the book, it was looking like a really long evening, and I hadn't read any Chandler for weeks. So I chucked Teran like pre-stressed besoms of glittering concrete.

Rating:
Summary: Powerful thriller
Review: Mr. Terans first novel is definitely one with emotional highs and lows! A gritty read! A real page-turner! In 1970, a young boy finds a woman's brutally murdered body. 25 years later, Bob Hightower, a deputy sheriff, is called upon to investigate a similar savage murder. The victims are his ex-wife and her husband. A group called "The Left Handed Path" kidnaps his daughter during this time. They are a satanic cult dealing in drugs and more. God is a Bullet, is about a father who goes through a suspenseful cat and mouse chase to find his missing daughter. If you like an excellent, powerful thriller, then you must read this book! I for one will reread it again in the future. I have to warn the faint of heart this one is graphic.

Rating:
Summary: NY Times reviewed some other book
Review: This is one of the most phenomenal books I have ever read. Not just for the storyline, which is done with horrific class and brutal simplicity, but also for the bleakness which Teran manages to convey so well. You simply feel the dirt, the grime; you smell the sweat; you feel like you are in the bars; you may even glance down every once in a while to make sure you haven't been tatooed by the Ferryman. It is a gifted writer indeed that can actually make you feel as though you have been lifted off the page and put down in the middle of the story - reading this, you would swear that you are in a truck in Barstow or crossing the Mexican badlands, watching the main characters pass by in front of your eyes. The attention to detail is really good, really descriptive and it sets up the whole thing beautifully. It is utterly believable, the 'bad guys' are bad, bad, bad....but without cliche and the whole thing will leave you yearning for more. I thought Donald Harstad was a gifted writer -Teran makes Harstad look thorougly amateur.

This would make a GREAT film.