A review by chandra_space_telescope_
The Rozabal Line by Ashwin Sanghi, Shawn Haigins

Did not finish book. Stopped at 23%.

Was gifted this book by my brother. Right off the bat, the writing style is fairly pleasant. When I started I tried to ignore the comparisons to The Da Vinci Code, and thank god, because I tried reading it before this book BECAUSE of the comparisons and I really, really hated the writing style there (interesting concepts but god the writing style treats you like a dumbass while sounding so so apathetic about moments which felt like they should've been delivered with more of an actual impact but weren't). The descriptions here have a POINT (blonde hair blue eyes described to point out Vincent's foreignness, unlike with Robert Langdon being described as attractive because… people thought he was hot, I guess? do tell me how that's relevant to the plot or Langdon's characterization? page-turner my ass the writing style was a chore to read through and it's like the book thought you were a dumbass, be a better thriller and do your religion-based social commentary better too; I can tolerate incoherence much better than, "yes we have social commentary, yes there will be moments that were supposed to be impactful but the writing wants to get back to fucking Langdon again so we won't focus that much on the more interesting stuff, and when we do we won't narrate it in a way that delivers the impact & intrigue very well because we want to get back to robbie of the symbology and the erudite whatever again andhsgsjshfaksh").

Anyway. This isn't a screed against The Da Vinci Code. So I'll shut up about that.
The Rozabal Line! The Rozabal Line.

I must admit, I didn't mind going through a whirlwind of new characters. They were interesting for the short amount of time we saw them, that's better than dragging their involvement. I can see why someone would dislike that since it's good to have a particular character you can latch onto, and also good to have an audience surrogate.

I disliked the lack of audience surrogate though mayyyyybe I could've seen this working in an epistolary format. A bit like reading through the SCP stories. Would make the involvement of all these different characters make more sense, as well as all the research and footnotes. Would've made the connections seem more coherent too.

And the footnotes? I'll be honest, footnotes just make my brain happy. Not sure why. I just like looking at footnotes. Scratches an itch. Very much a personal thing. Might make the experience worse for some, though.

Occasionally the descriptions are… well, why do I need to know the exact type of telephone this Cardinal is using? Followed immediately by just very stereotypical men writing women fare. BUT her dialogue with the Cardinal is unhinged and "her bright eyes shone with fervent devotion" before she says what she says, great energy, prepped me for MORE of being slapped left and right by the book (not necessarily a bad thing).

Some of the info is a bit too encyclopaedic and, "let's go on a tour", and at the very least more of it could've been delivered in dialogue rather than narration. 

The connections were… coherent, I guess. Reading the connections with, "The human ability to twist narratives & meanings for our means is universal" in mind made the connections chilling (specifically when I saw them in contexts of cruelty, like with the anandamides).

I loved Swakilki (though the descriptions of her body very much sound like an outsider's descriptions rather than her own. surely joy at murder and seduction aren't the only aspects of her borne from the suffering? every other aspect about her was written well enough. but god the male gaze)

Breakneck pacing. Why are people on Storygraph marking this book slow-paced???

Also, again @ the reviewers, why are you folks just uncritically accepting the, "Jesus was in India" thing?? Even 5 minutes of research will tell you how contentious the claim is (the very existence of a historical Jesus is contentious too), I'm not even a theology guy but just… here's one single article about one of the first stories we hear about, the Buddhist monk saying Christians are basically Buddhists and that Jesus travelled to India https://stellarhousepublishing.com/jesus-in-india/ (yes it has citations). I read that particular part in the chapter as making fun of the fact that every religion is out to prove that it's The Truth. Bizarre that some readers took that so uncritically. Though that theme obviously isn't being applied to Hinduism.

Double-checking the research in this book and sort of reviewing the reviews (seeing how others interpreted it) is more entertaining than actually reading the book, you know. It's a bit of a clusterfuck of a book. Would've been less of a clusterfuck if you delivered better, the Dan Brown comparisons pointed out the meh writing style (though the writing style *here* pisses me off less than Dan Brown's, as you may have gathered from the start of this review; and it must be noted that this review in itself is a clusterfuck as well, how appropriate).

The book just keeps throwing things at you??? The characters are fine and I can follow along but it just. It just keeps throwing things. So fast.

As a writer I'm just taking this book as a lesson in, "so this is what ridiculously fast-paced narration looks like!"

Sometimes it felt fever dreamy. Sometimes, this was enjoyable. Most of the time, I just had to LAUGH at the whiplash of the change in location/topic/POV.

Vincent was interesting enough. Too bad it was so so easy to lose track of his character development because– wow, I wonder if I've used the word 'clusterfuck' yet!

The Queens 2006 scene in Chapter 5 WAS pretty good though. Chapter 6 had good moments too. This book, it has a way of punching you with some wonderful moments before tossing you back into the sea of incoherence. The POTENTIAL in here.

Sometimes the stuff about reincarnation really felt, idk, like it had the vibe of "wiser than thou". It creeped up slowly but it was definitely annoying when it started creeping in everywhere.

Then the past life stuff, being backed up with Brian Weiss's book and it did not at all seem like the character of Martha would be challenged (unless all the reviews mislead me, in which case, my bad)…

…at that point I gave up. I am busy. I have more books I want to read. Maybe I'll pick this one up again some late late time in the future. Absolutely not at the moment though.

All in all, I am consoling myself by saying, "it's a good case study if you dissect it!"
Would not recommend.