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Rating: Summary: Kanaly Strikes a Homer! Review: I didn't know it would be an interesting book, nor did I expect to care so much about its characters. "Thoughts of God" is so much more than anyone would expect. Above all else, I think it was a comparison--our world with countless others, and bridging it all...God's thoughts. Read it with an open mind.
Rating: Summary: Hindu Cosmology and Murder Thriller Review: I found "Thoughts of God" to be well-crafted and engaging, with a unique form. Unlike another reviewer who saw this novel as presenting components of Christian cosmology, I found the novel to follow more closely Hindu cosmology and the writings of Meher Baba. Note that in the Hindu/MeherBaba view, the hell state, as well as heaven, is not forever; it's just another condition and then earthly life begins again in another incarnation. Compare the movie "Made in Heaven." In any case a novel is not a book of theology or divine scripture. A novel tells a story, conveys emotion, maybe gives food for thought. This novel succeeded in those things.
Rating: Summary: Hindu Cosmology and Murder Thriller Review: I found "Thoughts of God" to be well-crafted and engaging, with a unique form. Unlike another reviewer who saw this novel as presenting components of Christian cosmology, I found the novel to follow more closely Hindu cosmology and the writings of Meher Baba. Note that in the Hindu/MeherBaba view, the hell state, as well as heaven, is not forever; it's just another condition and then earthly life begins again in another incarnation. Compare the movie "Made in Heaven." In any case a novel is not a book of theology or divine scripture. A novel tells a story, conveys emotion, maybe gives food for thought. This novel succeeded in those things.
Rating: Summary: Compelling human drama, with trite, boring God-speculation Review: The story is about a sociopath who hunts children and, we are made to believe, rapes them before he kills them. Pretty gruesome stuff. Meanwhile a vigilante (who is himself haunted by the death of his small boy at the hands of gang bangers) becomes obsessed with the "hunter" and attempts to track him across the country. A very compelling story that kept my reading. Interspersed with this powerful story are little vignettes of life and death, love and war, scattered throughout the universe. At times they dove-tail with the human drama, at other times they seem to be almost included just to make it scf-fi. The last thread woven throughout the novel is what I can only surmise as a peek at the notebooks of God, in which He reviews His "experiment" and attempts to figure out what has gone wrong to bring about such Evil people in the world. This is the part I liked the least---the author is so stuck in the Christian world of good/evil, right/wrong dichotomies that the "theory" behind the novel is just not satisfying --- it is 2-dimensional. As long as we must see things so rigidly locked into these either-or positions (a real flaw with Christian cosmology the thorn in whose side is the existence of suffering) it seems that any conclusions we draw must be shallow and missing the infinite complexity of life on Earth. The "novel" conclusions drawn by this author are tired and cliched --- the bad guy goes to hell at the end. C'mon, lets get a little more developed in our relationship to misery and suffering, okay?
Rating: Summary: Kanaly Strikes a Homer! Review: THOUGHTS OF GOD is one of the most brilliant and ambitious novels I've read in the last three years. This is no rehashing of typical ideas. It is a courageous, original investigation into why we are who we are, how we make choices, why some of us tend to loose our souls along the way. At the same time, it is an on-the-edge-of-your-seat thriller. I couldn't put it down. The writing is masterful and the story not only is thought provoking, but it stays with you--urging you to think bigger, be bigger--love and live more fully. Keep writing, Michael Kanaly!
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