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A review by brettt
The Sign by Raymond Khoury
1.0
After his debut, The Last Templar, Raymond Khoury wrote two other books before returning to that book's main couple, Sean Reilly and Tess Chaykin. The Sign, from 2009, was the second of those.
A mysterious sign appears in the air over Antarctica with no visible source or means of transmission. The television crew there to cover an ice shelf collapse captures it on film, and before too long learns of a connection to a desert-cave-dwelling priest. When the sign reappears in Greenland, people around the world begin wondering if it represents the arrival of extraterrestrial beings or maybe even a divine agent. The television crew, a man whose brother disappeared while working on a technologically advanced but secret project and the priest begin to learn not everything is as it seems. Powerful forces have an agenda for the sign's appearances, and they will guard it at the cost of the lives of anyone who gets in their way.
Khoury uses both his heroes and villains to highlight what he believes are flaws in how religious people have handled the modern world, paying particular attention to climate change issues. He does so about as subtly as a tip-toeing rhino and chokes his narrative with too many separate character threads that he does not have space to properly develop. Each lead gets his or her own chunk of personal historical background instead of the room to show us who they are, and Khoury makes the same mistake when it comes to the ideas he would like to get across.
Khoury is a good storyteller and above-average stylist with a handy way about an action scene. But he wants very much to Say Something Important, even though he is nowhere near a good enough novelist to do so. Of course authors since the dawn of papyrii have intended their work to comment somehow on the human condition. But a commentary invites reflection, engagement and perhaps even give-and-take discussion. Khoury doesn't comment in The Sign so much as he lectures, hectors and -- ironically given his presentation of religious people -- preaches. He does so with character speeches and expository passages that make an already complex narrative sludgy and slow.
Without taking the time to really novelize his ideas instead of narrating them, Khoury makes his case in The Sign a pretty much take-it-or-leave it proposition. And since that flaw also hampers the story's flow, you might be better off making the latter choice.
Original available here.
A mysterious sign appears in the air over Antarctica with no visible source or means of transmission. The television crew there to cover an ice shelf collapse captures it on film, and before too long learns of a connection to a desert-cave-dwelling priest. When the sign reappears in Greenland, people around the world begin wondering if it represents the arrival of extraterrestrial beings or maybe even a divine agent. The television crew, a man whose brother disappeared while working on a technologically advanced but secret project and the priest begin to learn not everything is as it seems. Powerful forces have an agenda for the sign's appearances, and they will guard it at the cost of the lives of anyone who gets in their way.
Khoury uses both his heroes and villains to highlight what he believes are flaws in how religious people have handled the modern world, paying particular attention to climate change issues. He does so about as subtly as a tip-toeing rhino and chokes his narrative with too many separate character threads that he does not have space to properly develop. Each lead gets his or her own chunk of personal historical background instead of the room to show us who they are, and Khoury makes the same mistake when it comes to the ideas he would like to get across.
Khoury is a good storyteller and above-average stylist with a handy way about an action scene. But he wants very much to Say Something Important, even though he is nowhere near a good enough novelist to do so. Of course authors since the dawn of papyrii have intended their work to comment somehow on the human condition. But a commentary invites reflection, engagement and perhaps even give-and-take discussion. Khoury doesn't comment in The Sign so much as he lectures, hectors and -- ironically given his presentation of religious people -- preaches. He does so with character speeches and expository passages that make an already complex narrative sludgy and slow.
Without taking the time to really novelize his ideas instead of narrating them, Khoury makes his case in The Sign a pretty much take-it-or-leave it proposition. And since that flaw also hampers the story's flow, you might be better off making the latter choice.
Original available here.