I haven't written a review in months--haven't felt motivated--but I feel compelled to warn any of my friends and family not to bother with this book. Read The Name of the Rose and The Da Vinci Code and call it a day. I can't believe I even bothered to finish this. I knew who dunnit as soon as the first victim was described. The writing is nothing special, the action is all over the place, I felt no reason to care for any of the main characters.

Why on earth did Timon have to be an assassin? What was the point? What did it actually contribute to the plot? Name of the Rose shows us that you can have an intelligent monk with a keen memory discussing controversial ancient texts without trying to make them some kind of seventeenth-century action hero. I'm also seriously annoyed that with all the artistic/historical liberties taken, Shakespeare didn't get a cameo working on the Psalms. Seriously, I think that's why I kept reading.

I took one course on the new testament in college and, let me tell you, if you want to read stuff that turns the Bible on its head, go and actually read the Gospel of Thomas. Seriously, it's hilarious. Quibbling over the translation of Jesus's name's got nothing on smart-mouth kid Jesus striking dead his annoying playmates only to raise them again when he got in trouble.

If the real Anne Marbury became the real Anne Hutchinson, her character was badly underutilized. Also, we're supposed to believe in some sort of crazy Pope-puppet assassin but not that Anne could be considered an adult at age 14 in 160-whatever? Give me a break. Anyone who knows anything about this time in history knows that a 20 year old woman is practically an old maid.

All I can say is, I'm glad it was simple enough that I was able to bomb through it in pretty much two days--I should have stopped before getting halfway through, but at least I didn't waste much more time on this.

Sorry for being bitter, but I'd been saving this one hoping it would be good...so the disappointment is doubled. ( )

One of the translators working in Cambridge on what is to be the Authorised/King James Version of the Bible is murdered. Is the mysterious figure enrolled to find the murderer and protect the other translators quite what he seems? What is the connection with certain very secret documents also entrusted to the translators?

The premise of the book -- suppose the translators of the AV/KJV had been given copies of gnostic and other gospels that didn't make it into the Bible -- deserves a much better piece of speculative fiction than this tosh. The author shows profound ignorance of the religious make up of Jacobean England. One of the translators is described as "a friend of England's notable rabbis". Since except for one or two specifically exempted individuals, Jews were not allowed back into England till the Protectorate, there wouldn't have been any English rabbis, notable or otherwise. What is a monk doing wandering round openly dressed in such a way that people can immediately see that he is a monk or priest? I very much doubt the Pope would have been referred to by ordinary people in England as "His Holiness" or that they would have cared much about his opinion on the translation. Other anachronisms include the Pope referring to the translation (not yet completed) as the King James Version and to the Anglican Communion, two terms that wouldn't start being used till much later.

The translators themselves do not come off well, being assimilated to the most ignorant tendencies in American Christianity. I really can't see that these scholars, expert in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, would have been so flurried to find that Jesus was called Yeshua in Hebrew, or that there were textual and translation errors in the manuscript tradition.

I borrowed this from a friend, expecting something a lot more entertaining and intelligent. Fortunately he didn't pay the full price for it, just a dollar. Even so, I think he was robbed. ( )

This novel is set in Jacobean England in 1605,during a time of great religious turmoil. King James I has commissioned a new translation of the Bible, to be produced by a committee of scholars.These are the basic historical facts around which the author has woven an imaginative and thrilling tale of espionage, plotting and murder. As a bonus,the author gives some interesting historical data at the end of the book, indicating some of the ways in which he has re-worked or embellished certain real-life characters, and invented others for the purpose of the story. There is also a good bibliography and a list of online resources, including various translations of the Bible. One small error that should have been picked up by an editor - two characters are searching for clues on the ground and and find gopher holes(p129). In America, yes, but not in England,I think. On the whole, though, quite enjoyable, fast-moving and well-researched. ( )

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