Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

I read Faith by John Love a while ago and enjoyed it, although it had some beginning author issues, so I was excited to give this book a try.

Unfortunately, I think that the author has gone in a different direction than I would have preferred. His main character is a James Bond type whose cover is being an owner of a rare book store. He loves classical music, knows a lot about philosophy ( or at least as much as the author does) and because of genetic engineering and reworking is lightning fast, super-smart, and ultra-strong. He's the perfect secret agent, bought and paid for by the UN.

He's assigned a mission- to be a bodyguard for an iconoclastic religious figure whose religion's primary appeal seems to be its secular humanist bent. She's a woman who likes to eat and have sex, and this annoys our fastidious protagonist, who is all about self-denial.

Well, I confess I didn't get very far into this one. It almost read to me like a satire of pulp, because the hero was so over the top, the name-dropping of artists, designers and philosophers seemed so designed to appeal to the casual reader who wants to feel superior because they know who Frank Lloyd Wright was and what Bauhaus furniture looks like. Was the author mocking our brand-oriented, surface level society? Unfortunately, I don't think he was, which takes him down a notch for me. He really seemed to want to write a thinking person's thriller, but his philosophers came across as pretentious and sophomoric, not interesting or original. Lots of testosterone, very serious, too earnestly intense in its styling for me.