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3.52 AVERAGE
3.52 AVERAGE
adventurous
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I read this book back when it first came out, now I have re-read it "on location."
I have enjoyed it all over again, the way Frank can weave a story is always captivating. This remains one of my favorite from him.
I have enjoyed it all over again, the way Frank can weave a story is always captivating. This remains one of my favorite from him.
Is it possible to give a book half a star? This book made me cringe from the opening paragraph, but because of what I wanted to figure out the plot of this book. I still can't figure out anything other than there were mutated apes. This 'Christian' book reminded me of a bad Stephen King fanfiction with a knack for genetic splicing like with the Maximum Ride series. I would never recommend this book to a friend, I wouldn't even recommend to my worst enemy.
A good read for someone who is interested in the Big Foot lore and some thrilling adventure.
Christian fiction isn't always that great but Peretti is a decent writer and Monster isn't bad. Whatever you think of his plot devices, he writes with good pace, reasonable dialogue and vivid descriptions so the pages turn quickly and easily. There are some good twists and turns and there's a fair bit more blood and gore than you may have expected.
However the central plot device requires a healthy imagination, not necessarily a bad thing. At the heart of it, he makes a point which is that in evolution mutation doesn't improve upon the original, seeking to score a fiction point for the creationists. There's also Bigfoot. Anyway, it was OK and I although I think I still need a bit more fiction in me I'm reading for some more serious stuff too. So job done.
However the central plot device requires a healthy imagination, not necessarily a bad thing. At the heart of it, he makes a point which is that in evolution mutation doesn't improve upon the original, seeking to score a fiction point for the creationists. There's also Bigfoot. Anyway, it was OK and I although I think I still need a bit more fiction in me I'm reading for some more serious stuff too. So job done.
Wasn't worth my time. Only one of two books that I remember reading and not finishing. It was too boring for me to finish.
What did I just read?!? I picked this up in an op-shop about a year ago and have only just got around to reading it, so until recently I was innocent of the fact it is a CHRISTIAN BIGFOOT NOVEL.
Nowhere on the front or back cover is Peretti's God-bothering mentioned. Only when I read the review quotes on the first page did it begin to dawn on me that he is "the king of the faith-based fiction genre" and "the world's hottest writer of spiritual thrillers". (I had to LOL that they included the NYT's review, "Potboiling adventure is combined with a distinctly conservative theology.") And then in the acknowledgments, Peretti thanks the "director of the Center for Creation Studies at Liberty University". Massive warning klaxons were going off!!!
The basic plot here is that a young married couple head out on a wilderness retreat in a rugged corner of northwest Idaho with another married couple who are their best friends. The patronising aim is to bring wimpy, stuttering Beck out of her shell. And maybe to get in touch with God.
Instead, Beck gets abducted by a troop of Sasquatches, and learning to survive within their social structure brings her out of her shell, all right! Meanwhile her husband, a sheriff's deputy, and his friends, a disgraced (because he is a creationist) biology researcher and his CSI wife (who is also Native American), use their convenient skills to track down Beck. But other people are also being attacked… not by the Sasquatches (who are God's creations after all), but by a mutant human-chimp hybrid monster that is the real monster of the novel Monster!
And you know what else is monstrous? EVOLUTION. Because according to the logic of this novel, evolutionists are so intolerant of any evidence that their precious theory doesn't hold water that they will attempt to 'prove' it by force, through a cruel Frankensteinian program of genetic engineering, with the aim of – what? Who knows? Proving that humans and chimpanzees share 98 per cent of their DNA (a statistic that Peretti brings up frequently, only to mock it as a hollow dogma).
It is so annoying to me that this would have been a perfectly entertaining Michael Crichton-esque thriller without the tendentious Christianity. But Peretti is determined to argue not merely that evolutionary theory is incorrect, but also that its proponents are all cartoonish mad scientist villains who'll break all the laws of nature in order to ensure their research projects get the 'right results' to secure funding from Big Evolution (laughably represented here as "American Geographic magazine" and the "Evolution Channel").
According to this novel, evolutionary scientists are all glass-jawed tyrants who close ranks against virtuous creationist dissenters and crush their careers for merely suggesting that evolution might have some holes in it. This was hard to swallow, when the advancement of science is actually predicated on debate and disagreement, and many in the scientific community can easily reconcile their religious faith with their scientific practice.
It may be hard for dogmatic American Christians to accept, but it's possible to write villainous mad-scientist characters, and narrate conspiracies to cover up shady genetic engineering experiments funded by shadowy corporations, without hanging shit on evolutionary theory, which is a perfectly uncontroversial scientific consensus outside the insular circles of American religious fundamentalism.
Anyway. This gets two stars rather than one, because the story itself was fast-paced and told with some verve and urgency (if with few shocks or surprises). But if you're not already convinced by its conservative theology – which I never will be – it's mainly a curiosity from an extremely weird (but apparently quite profitable) literary subculture.
Nowhere on the front or back cover is Peretti's God-bothering mentioned. Only when I read the review quotes on the first page did it begin to dawn on me that he is "the king of the faith-based fiction genre" and "the world's hottest writer of spiritual thrillers". (I had to LOL that they included the NYT's review, "Potboiling adventure is combined with a distinctly conservative theology.") And then in the acknowledgments, Peretti thanks the "director of the Center for Creation Studies at Liberty University". Massive warning klaxons were going off!!!
The basic plot here is that a young married couple head out on a wilderness retreat in a rugged corner of northwest Idaho with another married couple who are their best friends. The patronising aim is to bring wimpy, stuttering Beck out of her shell. And maybe to get in touch with God.
Instead, Beck gets abducted by a troop of Sasquatches, and learning to survive within their social structure brings her out of her shell, all right! Meanwhile her husband, a sheriff's deputy, and his friends, a disgraced (because he is a creationist) biology researcher and his CSI wife (who is also Native American), use their convenient skills to track down Beck. But other people are also being attacked… not by the Sasquatches (who are God's creations after all), but by a mutant human-chimp hybrid monster that is the real monster of the novel Monster!
And you know what else is monstrous? EVOLUTION. Because according to the logic of this novel, evolutionists are so intolerant of any evidence that their precious theory doesn't hold water that they will attempt to 'prove' it by force, through a cruel Frankensteinian program of genetic engineering, with the aim of – what? Who knows? Proving that humans and chimpanzees share 98 per cent of their DNA (a statistic that Peretti brings up frequently, only to mock it as a hollow dogma).
It is so annoying to me that this would have been a perfectly entertaining Michael Crichton-esque thriller without the tendentious Christianity. But Peretti is determined to argue not merely that evolutionary theory is incorrect, but also that its proponents are all cartoonish mad scientist villains who'll break all the laws of nature in order to ensure their research projects get the 'right results' to secure funding from Big Evolution (laughably represented here as "American Geographic magazine" and the "Evolution Channel").
According to this novel, evolutionary scientists are all glass-jawed tyrants who close ranks against virtuous creationist dissenters and crush their careers for merely suggesting that evolution might have some holes in it. This was hard to swallow, when the advancement of science is actually predicated on debate and disagreement, and many in the scientific community can easily reconcile their religious faith with their scientific practice.
It may be hard for dogmatic American Christians to accept, but it's possible to write villainous mad-scientist characters, and narrate conspiracies to cover up shady genetic engineering experiments funded by shadowy corporations, without hanging shit on evolutionary theory, which is a perfectly uncontroversial scientific consensus outside the insular circles of American religious fundamentalism.
Anyway. This gets two stars rather than one, because the story itself was fast-paced and told with some verve and urgency (if with few shocks or surprises). But if you're not already convinced by its conservative theology – which I never will be – it's mainly a curiosity from an extremely weird (but apparently quite profitable) literary subculture.