Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A devine solution for a divine problem?, 5 Feb 2009
Sam Bourne's "The last Testament" deals with the conflict in Palestine. One can clearly see that Sam Borune is passionate about it and has first hand experience. His basic idea is quite intriguing: if the problem is about the religion, the holy land and the holy sides than maybe a solution coming down from the jointly respected "father" of Islam and Jews might provide the "divine solution". Here the quest starts. However too many have an interest in the warfare and not in peace.
The book starts very, very slowly as Sam Bourne needs a quite some time and even more pages to introduce the characters, their backgrounds and simply sets the stage. He of course tries at length to explain the conflict and the various interests the groups involved have. I simply feel that this is a bit much and a bit tiring. However finally the story takes off and there are some nice twists and interesting developments. In the end it is less about what the solution, the last testament is, what about who tries to prevent it being discovered. I am not very happy that the story is not told straight but with sudden flashbacks to the past. In short I am missing a bit real tension, fast moving events. It is suppose to be a thriller and less a book about the conflict in Palestine.
The novel is not as good as I have expected, but it is far from being a page-turner of first order. All in all I feel 3 stars is an appropriate rating.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A great page-turning read!, 26 Nov 2007
This is easy. If you like a really good read then ignore the bad reviews and give this a go. I finished it last night at 4am in the morning because I couldn't put it down. It does what it sets out to do. Great story with a 'this could happen' feel about it. Good idea for a story, entertaining and a page-turner. Which is what most of us are looking for with fiction. It's set against the Israeli-Palenstinian issue which had me interested from the start. I haven't read the first book but I will after this.
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28 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
It will make you laugh and cry. In all the wrong places., 12 Oct 2007
The Last Testament is desperately, infuriatingly disappointing. Be under no illusion: this is not an enjoyable read.
I get through a lot of thrillers and I quite enjoyed Sam Bourne's previous effort, The Righteous Men. I often read last thing at night when my critical faculties are anything but acute, so my disbelief is quite easily suspended as I become absorbed by an engaging narrative.
The Righteous Men had a few annoyances, but The Last Testament is somewhat different. I guess that either it was written before the previous book and held back because the publisher thought it was too weak, or Jonathan Freedland (Sam Bourne) had a multi-book deal and had to churn this one out very quickly. It certainly has the feel of a novel that has been rushed. It seems the editor barely glanced at it, because so many repetitive phrases escaped scrutiny.
The suspense is so clumsily implemented as to be non-existent. One character fears for the life of another upon hearing a gunshot. This character instantly and repeatedly thinks the other is dead on such flimsy evidence that you know the shot either missed or was merely a flesh wound. It is also a staple of thrillers that someone initially presented as a good guy will transpire to have been a bad guy all along. That's fine - the interest is in working out who this might be. But in The Last Testament it's the wrong guy. After a prolonged build up when our hero reveals that she recognises the voice of this man, we discover that he's not anyone interesting at all, but a minor and never sympathetic character who is plausibly malevolent from the outset.
Bourne is so determined to be uncontroversial that there are good guys and bad guys on all sides - I lost track of the different groups pursuing the protagonists, simply because there are forces of evil in every faction.
I would say that the characters are wooden and two-dimensional, but that itself is wooden and two-dimensional criticism. The protagonist, Maggie Costello the beautiful young Irish mediator, remains something of an enigma, because we never learn what exactly she has done as a mediator, apart from veiled references to her illustrious past. Her behaviour is also inconsistent. The plot commits her to numerous acts of bravery, but late in the book a feeble attempt at suspense has her collapse when a shot is fired, only for it to be revealed that she faints at the sound of gunfire and isn't hurt in the slightest.
I'm a big fan of clever twists or cunning escapes, and am in awe of skilful, imaginative authors who extricate characters from impossible situations by cunning means previously unheard of. Bourne doesn't manage a single one of those, instead resorting to the pillaging of overused plot devices. The mistake he makes is in only stealing bad ones. Tell me if you've heard this one before: our heroes bluff their way past a security guard into a closed building by pretending they are a film crew shooting a documentary, and the reason there's no cameraman is that he's hidden in the hills using a zoom lens. At least Bourne has the embarrassment to have one character say, 'she bought that crap?' She might have, Bourne, but none of your readers will.
He throws clichés around carelessly. At one point, a character brings Maggie 'an oversized cup of steaming coffee'. I don't know about you, but I've never seen a mug of coffee steam. Steam implies the coffee is boiling. I assume he means that there was some vapour rising from the cup. He could have just said that Uri brought Maggie some coffee, but that's too simple a phrase, so he has to elaborate it with the first adjective that comes to mind. Perhaps he could have thought for a nanosecond longer until he came up with a different adjective. You might think this criticism is petty, but when on every other page a phrase jars so much that you stop reading, it's difficult to become immersed in the story.
Towards the end of the book there is a harrowing scene involving an abduction. At least, I assume it's harrowing because we're told it is, but I was never in the slightest bit moved. In fact I laughed out loud. You would too if you read the phrase 'her arsehole stretched open for their inspection'.
The denouement is disappointing simply because the premise of the story is unconvincing. The protagonists are 'plunged into a mystery rooted in the last unsolved riddle of the Bible', according to the back cover. Even if that were anything approaching a meaningful statement, it is a difficult sell for Bourne to persuade the reader that there is any historical evidence that could ever have any influence on Middle East politics. He teases us from half way through the story with hints of a stunning revelation, which isn't made until the final chapter. And boy is it a letdown. It has to be - nothing relating to a search for peace in Jerusalem can be anything other than a wishy-washy compromise. I can't believe any reader would fail to guess the ending.
The book blurb boasts that Freedland chaired a dialogue between Israelis and Palestianians that led to the 2003 Geneva Accords. You might assume from this that the protagonist in 'The Last Testament' is a more feminine and attractive version of Freedland himself. I can only hope that his mediation skills and expertise in Middle East politics are better than those on show in this book. Otherwise I can think of no way he could have brokered a genuine accord, unless he badgered the participants so much with 'oversized cups of steaming coffee' that they happily signed anything to stop him. Either that or he stretched his arsehole open for their inspection.
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