Brek Cutler suddenly finds herself in a train station, with no memory of how she got there. Gradually she begins to understand that she is dead, and that she, a lawyer in life, is now representing souls before the Final Judgment. This was a very unusual story, but I have to say that the author's vision of life after death terrified me. Original, yes. Thought-provoking. But ultimately left me feeling down and discouraged... PROS:- By far my favorite aspect of this book was its determination to help us see circumstances from every angle -- to understand why a person became who they did, and how their motivations were fueled by their (mis)perceptions of others. Such "walking in another man's shoes" breeds compassion. Love that.- Raises good issues for discussion such as justices vs. mercy, when to forgive, pacifism, the afterlife, the nature of truth vs. perception, etc. - Includes a murder mystery that is gradually revealed/solved (what kept me reading - that, and a deadline).- A quick read: 2 nights.CONS:- The construction is sloppy: a) Shemaya (aka Purgatory) is the author's framework to address 3 key issues: understanding others' perspectives, choosing between "justice" and forgiveness, and solving the murder. But instead of recognizing it as such and simplifying it to the most efficient structure to accomplish these goals, he made it complicated, contradictory, and ultimately self-defeating. For example, he created all these irrelevant/unnecessary questions about who the "mentors" in Shemaya were, why they stayed there, whether we could trust what they were telling the heroine, what kind of magic they used, what they looked like, why they fought with each other, etc. None of this moved the book forward or was ever answered - it was just distracting from the good stuff. b) The author raised too many big expectations that were never developed. Ex: The mentors seem to imply the system really is broken and Brek is somehow special, brings them hope, might be able to fix it, but then nothing seems to come of that. All along she rails against God and Shemaya for not being just, but in the end, we never see either her or God demonstrate clear forgiveness or justice or both. In fact, she seems to reach her climax of anger near the end - and it is..rewarded? c) The end is this odd mash-up of symbolism gone awry. I won't even be spoiling it a little to tell you that it involves a random selection of characters dressed as monks on Mt. Ararat thousands of years before they actually lived, watching the heroine on laptops and swimming after a pendant from her dead uncle. While the justice theme is hammered over our heads, passages like this were too obscure to even make sense.- The theology is sloppier. I don't really care if it's just a novel, but the further you go, it feels more like a spiritual book. At the end, the author even notes that it's like a parable (ala The Shack) - preaching his own convictions, which turn out to be really murky: a) He posits that Noah had to forgive God, questions God's justice in Shemaya, yet assumes at other points that God is trustworthy, just, and forgiving. He can't be Zeus and Yahweh at the same time. b) The whole Noah theme seems strange - like he didn't go back quite far enough to Gen 1, which is enigmatically alluded to but never explained. For someone who "studied religions," he doesn't seem to see how Noah's story fits into the arch of the Bible's story, let alone Jesus, who was all about the marriage of justice and mercy. c) By having a suicide bomber and his victim arrive at the same time, the author seems to propose that everyone can get to Shemaya, and yet it seems not everyone does (they're the only 2 from that blast), and then their fate is never clear. Does everyone stay until they choose forgiveness? And where do they go next -- some place of their own design (Nana) yet somehow with everyone else (since loneliness made Shemaya more like hell)? d) Compassion and forgiveness are awesome, but this author seems to push the line and imply that evil is not really evil, it's just a lack of understanding, deserving forgiveness but no consequence. At the same time, if anything is evil, it seems to be "justice," which is either impossible or unwelcome because it leads to more pain. Thus, the author limits love to gentleness, rather than including correction in its scope. If I did this with my children, I don't think he would find the outcome very...lovable.Ultimately, this was one of those books that the longer I thought about it, the less I liked it.
What do You think about Posledný Súd (2013)?
Fantastic book. Very deep and thought-provoking.
—justin
