Reader's Review: A thought-provoking conflict between orthodoxy and heresy

George Smith

If you enjoyed Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code or J.G. Sandom's The God Machine, there's a new and different author Brown, Dr. Lawrence Brown, to be precise, and he explores mysterious adventures with a theological backdrop and underpinning that draws back the curtain often shrouding historical fact and myth, to show you the world of intrigue, scheming, and danger behind it all.

The three great monotheistic religions of our modern world, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam provide the setting for a battle between heretics and the guardians of orthodoxy, with the fate and destinies of many ordinary people at stake. The meaning of an ancient scroll contains some carefully guarded, and hotly contested, secrets. With the stakes extremely high, the quest to find and reveal the secret to the world plays out against the threat of drastic action by those who will stop at nothing to keep the secrets of the past buried to preserve their own power and the allegiance of their followers.

Just like Dan Brown's and J.G. Sandom's work, Dr. Lawrence Brown's writing has been unjustly targeted by narrow fanatics who write negative reviews to try to stem the popularity of a well written novels which portrays forces like the inner sanctum of the Vatican and the scheming and conspiring secretive agents of the Mossad Israeli spy network in a way that offends their politically correct viewpoint. This is a book which isn't afraid to gore a few ox's or reveal when the emperor really doesn't have any clothes, despite the cheers of the adoring crowd for his supposedly sartorial splendor.

This is very much a book for intelligent adults who like to be provoked to think, and wraps up a stirring adventure in the garb of contemporary reality, painting a highly visual portrait of a world split asunder by the possibilities of change. The effect is extremely cinematic, and I wouldn't be surprised to see this novel become the basis for a movie in the future. Right now, as readers, we are lucky, because we can now read the full, fleshed-out novel which future audiences will knowingly say was better than the film, with greater depth and complexity.