Chris Kuznetski - Sword of God

The reason for reading this one was simple. It was on the end of the shelf when I came to picking my next book. In general I know what to expect from a Chris Kuznetski, Payne and Jones (Batman and Robin) novel, so much so that I didn’t actually make that many notes on it.

My biggest criticism of his writing is that he foreshadows events far too much. More or less every chapter ends with a massive hint as to what will happen in the next chapter or the chapter after that and it’s a real shame too as his books and very readable and he is a great storyteller and character builder.

Despite my resounding praise for his work there is always nitpicking to be done. On page 67 (at least I’m lead to believe it is page 67 as it is directly after page 66 but doesn’t feature a page number. This is hardly Chris’s fault though as I’m sure he doesn’t do his own paperback printing) there is the use of the word ‘mum’ which I always find strange when written by an American author even when talking about Koreans.

Page 99 has a rather bizarre paragraph about Muhammed and how Muslims and English speaking Muslims deal with saying his name, which is fine... only it has no bearing on the story at all. Other than maybe highlight that Shari is an English speaking Muslim who doesn’t follow the customs but we knew that anyway and if it was such a big deal, why doesn’t anyone else mention it? The narrative isn’t really required and doesn’t add anything to the story.

I didn’t see anything else even worth mentioning until page 316 where another meaningless paragraph is present. The entire section about the Abraj Al Bait Towers feels tacked in just to tell us about the target for the terrorist attack. We knew about the building before this point so it might have been better to have explained the size of the building earlier. Another way to address it would have been during the mission scoping before Payne and Jones attempt to take down the terrorists – that way it would have fit in to the story properly rather than feeling like a total tack-in before the finale.

The last thing I picked up on was the incorrect spelling of character name on page 414 out of 422 where Henderson is replaced by Harrison which made me reread the chapter over again to make sure I didn’t miss anything.

So in summary, Sword of God is a good read with a few minor quibbles and definitely a good book to pick up if you are going on a long journey. However, I couldn’t help but be disappointed with the lack of an actual ancient sword to find. I do enjoy the epic questing, searching for ancient objects and myths.

Sword of God by Chris Kuznetski was published by Penguin Books in 2007. RRP £6.99 (Paperback)