Rating: 
Summary: Thought provoking suspense!
Review: It is always a pleasure to read a Greg Iles novel. His beautiful prose enhances each intriguing plot with sharp and insightful narrative. Once again Iles has penned a winner with "The Footprints Of God". Dr. David Tennant has been appointed as an ethics advisor to oversee Project Trinity, the creation of an artificial intelligence computer. When his good friend and associate on the project dies under suspicious circumstances, David turns to Rachel Weiss, his psychiatrist, for support and assistance. She is at first skeptical until a murder attempt in her apartment results in the death of another agent. Soon the two are embroiled in a life or death search for proof of evil doings at Trinity. They must stop the project before the world is held hostage by the entity they have created.In addition to a suspense filled thriller Iles has given the reader much to ponder. His well crafted dialogues entice the reader to consider whether there can be such a thing as artificial intelligence and if so whether it will outpace its creators. He also delves into the origins of religious belief and its relation to intelligent life on earth. Despite it lofty philosophies Iles' book is mostly just great reading. It kept me up late into the night eager to find the answers.
Rating: 
Summary: This is not Iles best novel.......
Review: While I applaud Greg Iles for consistently delving into areas of fiction that are new to him, "The Footprints of God" just doesn't pan out. Iles starts off with the potential for a real pot boiler and the opportunity to explore both the nature of intelligence and the existence of God. Sounds great....however he gives us one dimensional characters in both the protagonists and the villains. And frankly, the idea that a psychiatrist would become romantically involved with a patient she suspects is mentally ill -- stretches credulity too far. The novel does build some genuine momentum -- but fails to deliver in the final act. If this is the first book of Iles you've read -- I encourage you to give another one of his books -- "24 Hours", "Sleep No More", "Dead Sleep", or the brilliant, "Quiet Game" a read before you make a decision about this author. I enjoyed the turn he took in "Sleep No More" with the paranormal twist incorporated into the thriller/mystery genre. Hopefully he'll get back to that and leave the questions about God, the Universe and Everything to Douglas Adams.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Thriller in Da Vinci Code style
Review: From its masterly opening line, Iles's (24 Hours) latest thriller is impossible to put down. We find Dr. David Tennant contemplating his life after friend and mentor Andrew Fielding is found dead in his lab. A stroke is the suspected cause, but David knows better because both men were part of an ultra-top-secret project known as Project Trinity, a quantum leap in the future of supercomputing and artificial intelligence. Both men had warned their managers about the experiment's dangers, and now David believes that he is next on the hit list. But he is starting to show strange side effects from the treatment he undertook for the project and is experiencing vivid visions of being Jesus Christ. His psychiatrist thinks that he should be institutionalized, until she, too, is targeted to be killed. The reader must make a great leap of faith in the final third of the book, and while not everyone will agree with Iles's conclusions, the work as a whole is extremely compelling. This is Iles's best book yet and should be a major best seller.
Rating: 
Summary: A book about the hubris of scientists.
Review: "The Footprints of God," by Greg Iles, deals with a timely subject, namely the clash between ethics and technology. Dr. David Tennant is a physicist, a doctor, and a professor of ethics. Therefore, Tennant is the perfect person to oversee the moral dilemmas posed by a new and groundbreaking scientific project known as Trinity. A team of brilliant scientists is attempting to build a supercomputer that will have capabilities far exceeding that of the human mind. The question is, do we want such a computer, and is there a danger that this technology could be used for evil purposes? Tennant is horrified when his colleague, Dr. Andrew Fielding, is found dead under mysterious circumstances. Tennant suspects that Fielding may have been murdered because he expressed serious reservations about the wisdom of proceeding with Project Trinity. Soon, Tennant realizes that his own life may be in danger and he takes to the road to elude the assassins that are on his trail. Accompanying Tennant is Rachel Weiss, his psychiatrist and friend. "The Footprints of God" does not work on any level. Its villains are stock characters, including the arrogant Peter Godin, who conceived of Trinity and had the money and clout to make it happen, and Geli Bauer, a vicious and dangerous woman who oversees security for the project. Tennant and Weiss are paper-thin characters who have little to do except elude their pursuers. At over four hundred and fifty pages, "The Footprints of God" is very repetitious, with numerous chase scenes and pedantic speeches about the power of science versus the legitimate needs of humanity. The ending is a series of action sequences that generate more confusion than suspense. There is also a subplot about Tennant's mystical visions, during which he explores the mysteries of the universe and even inhabits the body of Jesus. "The Footprints of God" suffers from wooden dialogue, a labored and overly complicated plot, and characters that never come to life. I do not recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: Great title, interesting premise but too long.
Review: I agree with booklover10's review of the book. The title is very intriguing . . . the actual storyline not so much. There was great potential for this to be an amazing book a la THE DA VINCI CODE and ANGELS AND DEMONS (both by Dan Brown). However, the chase scenes were repetitive and became commonplace which prevented the book from being a "page turner". Unlike the Dan Brown books which keep you riveted from page to page with the constant "discoveries" all leading up to solving the puzzle, mystery in question, the epiphanies in this book were very sporadic and at a certain point stopped being enlightening. Half way through the book I almost stopped reading it. But by that time I had invested so much time in the book that I decided to read through to the end. Would have been a much better read if the story went into greater detail about quantum physics. This would have made me more emotionally invovled/interested in the main characters struggles and conflicts.
Rating:
Summary: Definitely Worth Your Time
Review: Very little compares to the quiet joy of squandering a day off with the help of a good book. I feel no guilt whatsoever at the thought of staying in bed all day and reading a novel cover to cover, but it can't be just any novel, and it definitely can't be one with spiritual growth or moral lessons. No, dammit, I need danger, intrigue, and a spicy love interest to keep those pages turning. Greg Iles knows this, and has thoughtfully provided a new book, The Footprints of God, for that very purpose. David Tennant is a professor of ethics, selected by the President to keep tabs on a top-secret government project called Project Trinity. An elite team of doctors and scientists is attempting to build a new kind of supercomputer, using an actual human brain to create artificial intelligence. Ever since he was used as a guinea pig for a high-intensity MRI scan, David has developed frightening neurological symptoms: narcolepsy, recurring nightmares, and hallucinations that have the clarity and prescience of clairvoyant visions. For these reasons and others, David and his colleague Andrew Fielding have serious ethical concerns about the project - but Andrew turns up dead under suspicious circumstances, and the National Security Agency is looking for an excuse to neutralize David, too. David can't trust anyone affiliated with Trinity, so he turns to Dr. Rachel Weiss, the sexy psychiatrist who's been treating him for his terrifying dreams. Can they decode David's visions and discover the mysteries of Project Trinity before the NSA hunts them down? And even if they do, who will believe them? Iles knows better than to mess with a tried-and-true formula, and this book has all the elements of a good thriller: the stoic hero nursing a tragic loss, the bombshell love interest with whip-smart brains and a figure to match, a secretive and power-crazed government meddling with Things Beyond Its Understanding and thereby putting all of humanity at risk of extinction. It's like Lake Wobegon, but sexier - the men are brilliant, the women are gorgeous, and the government is above average. The characters are as developed as they need to be, and Iles gives them amusing quirks that riff on their roles; the psychiatrist has a touch of OCD, the tough-as-nails female assassin is a brokenhearted daddy's girl. There's a sense of playfulness in his treatment of the conventions that gives the story a tongue-in-cheek fun. The storytelling is everything you could wish from the genre; the prose is lean and spare, allowing the action to take center stage. However, after all the buildup, the plot founders in the third act, when man and machine get together for some agonized philosophizing in the tradition of earnest undergraduates the world over. To keep the suspense going, Iles has to throw an improbable assortment of doomsday threats into the mix, and it's simply too many balls to keep in the air. After having worked so hard to inject a mystical, quasi-religious element into the proceedings, Iles fails to resolve that facet of the plot, fobbing us off with a halfhearted explanation that raises more questions than it answers about artificial intelligence and the nature of God. Despite its unsatisfying ending, Iles's latest is, for the most part, a solidly crafted and entertaining thriller. If you're looking for a titillating way to fritter away your day off, you could do a lot worse than The Footprints of God.Check it out!(...)
Rating: 
Summary: Greg Iles is off track!
Review: I have read all Mr. Iles books & this is totally different subject matter -- just too OUT THERE for me, too sci-fi. I picked it up because he was the author. I didn't like it at all
Rating:
Summary: Why
Review: I bought this book in a small airport, because it was scincefiction, though i would probly have been better off anthor of the few choices! the plot was see through, and writen in a very sexest manner. And while haveing a scintific baseis it didn't have much scinces in it.
Rating:
Summary: Applicable Kurzweil
Review: Anyone that has read Kurzweil'z "The Age of Spiritual Machines" will love this book. It is a quick read that is full of thought provoking content. It hits both theological and scientific questions that have crossed most of our minds at one time or another. Whether you agree with the way the book presents possibilities or not you cannot deny that it is well done and thourough.
Rating:
Summary: Had some potential - Disappointing ending
Review: I enjoy Greg Iles novels and couldn't wait to read this one, based on my excitement from reading books like the Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons. However, I would avoid reading "Footprints" if your curiosity will let you. The book starts off slowly but holds your interest. Then it takes off towards the middle and makes you curious as to how the MRI science and religious dreams will tie together. Then, the last third of the book is totally boring, too technical and loses the pace and direction I was expecting. A lot of military mumbo jumbo and science that wasn't worth trying to understand, then it just wanders off into more philosophy and theories. Nothing solid to justify the time I invested in this novel. By the time I reached the end, I didn't even care about the characters because I was so bored and was praying (no pun intended) for the ending to save me. In general, the characters were either uninteresting or over the top. The ending left me thinking "did I miss something?". I wasted a lot of valueable reading time on this one. Don't give up on the author, he has written many great books.
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