Awful Victorian pious claptrap
341612
I have read many 19th century novels, but this one was particularly bad -- espouses a dreadful kind of moralistic Christianity in which an innocent baby dies to 'save' a drunkard by causing him to repent, etc.
3766066
Bought this book at my library's used book sale. Paid 50 cents for it. Paid too much.

When a good writer turns to cliche, shallow character development then throws in poorly done "romance novel" elements, its always a disappointment. Loyal readers feel duped.

AND that doesn't even include the insult to not just Catholicism but all Christianity. Beyond the cheap ploy of creating an order of vampire monks (Really? Really?) the more insidious issue is the implication of Jesus Christ as Vampire God. He raises Lazarus from the dead with his blood. His reason for giving the apostles bread & wine (his body & blood) at the last supper initiates them into his blood cult. He writes a hidden secret gospel, in his own blood.

Since the time of Christ, these vampire priest sustain themselves on the consecrated wine rather than human blood, the miraculous blood of Christ. And it is not the LOVE of Christ that they seek, but the cruel, painful penance they repeatedly experience for the evil they did when they were unwillingly made into vampires? They are apparently condemned souls (oh wait, they've lost their souls) because they were the victims of other "evil" vampires. Huh?

Fast forward to modern times and suspend all logic. These vampire priests (Cardinals too) have remained hidden and secret for 2,000 years - despite their long lives. Truly? No one notices that some cardinals and priests have been around for hundreds of years? The priests wear silver crosses so they can feel the pain the silver of the the cross gives them? They must remain celibate lest they destroy the women by taking all their blood in their blind blood lust? Now throw in Rasputin, add in the clueless archeologist and an American soldier (who's interactions seem to have been written by a high school romance novel fan) and you have the makings of what? A hodge podge of trite anti-Christian, unrealistic non-logical trash. Even for fantasy it reeks of insult to the readers' intelligence.

Amazon has this book listed in its Christian category. It could not be further from that. It is anti-Christian, anti-Christ and absurd.
965011
I'm stunned to read the positive reviews of this book.  It was so awful I couldn't even finish it.  As an AVID reader of historical romance, I have a pretty broad range of story lines and types I like so actually being appalled enough to abandon a book is big.  From the description on the book cover, this sounded unique and intriguing.
The reality is that not only is the "heroine" silly and unlikeable, she totally  unbelieveable.  Seriously, this demure so-called "lady" is initiating oral sex in Hyde Park after a couple of meetings?  Get real.
Mad Ian could have been just "flawed" as some other reviews stated but he's downright strange and disturbing. He made me cringe.
If you truly want an intriguing story with characters you really, really like and BELIEVE, look for anything by Meredith Duran or Julie Ann Long.
The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie went to the used book store in record time.
3522769
This is a terrible book! It is listed under Christian Fiction, but the only thing remotely related to Christianity is that the Characters have the same names as some persons in the Old Testament. To start with, the characters are shallow and very poorly developed. Noah is a scatterbrained, blind, forgetful character whose only real marks of faith are his "bulletproofness" to spears, and his ranting and raving to the local sinners about their sinfulness. The rest of Noahs family is pitiful. Imagine sexually addicted Shem who sleeps with every prostitute in the surrounding village and then his sister in law; blood lusting Japeth who kills or hobbles all the "extra animals" that show up as well as any humans who get in their way and comic relief Ham who is constantly saying off color quips about his mom, dad and other notables. How do they get wives? They are pulled from the rising waters as the world floods. The Story is so twisted, that it has little resemblance to the real story of Noah. Imagine mammoths ridden by Noahs cousins pulling gopher wood, ebony skinned slaves who are the ones to actually build the ark and Giants helping to save Noahs wife when she falls overboard. It is downright offensive in its continual portrayal of depraved individuals as more righteous than Noah or any of his family. (The most developed and lauded character is a prostitute who is known for brutally torturing and killing hundreds of people- both men and women!) To top it all off, the book portrays God as distant, unreasonable and constantly making mistakes/ too busy for Noah's family. I kept expecting there to be something redeeming about this book, but it never came. I highly recommend against purchasing or reading this book. Poorly written, shallow unbelievable characters and definitely not a story of faith in any sense of the word.
4837095
One Amazon reviewer called this mess religious self-help drivel poop. I couldn't agree more. It is sexist, evangelistic, unenlightened Christian drivel combined with a Hallmark-Channel rendering of (wildly inaccurate) historical anecdotes and Bible stories, and an attempt to replicate outdated corporate motivational crap like, for instance, Dale Carnegies How to Win Friends And Influence People. I regret wasting even two hours of my life on this.
2641782
Undoubtedly the author's intentions are altruistic, unfortunately I found this book to be one that I would throw into the garbage since I found most of it to be nonsense.  The first thing that made me uncomfortable was Fr. Dubay's ridiculous enchantment with the seeming (and absurdly archaic notion of) 'holiness' of Sts T and J.  He presents an anecdote of St. John's propensity to wear his belt so tightly as to cut into his skin as "gee whiz, this guy is so holy that he is willing to purposely cause himself suffering! ".  I mean come on, that is just downright stupid and potentially dangerous.

He presents a portrait of two people who have no human faults.  It is such a silly and backwards perspective.  There seems to be no recognition that the individuals were products of their very early century Catholic environment just as we cannot help being products of our own environment.

The list of nonsense goes on from there.  It is clear that he knows not of that which he speaks.

My review is harsh I concede.  Sorry but the the book was a nonsensical perspective of ''feel good" religious blather.  You too can be a saint if you just do what she did!  It belongs in the self-help section with the rest of the books that are actually no help at all.
2422774
I am a conservative and I do not at all sympathize with the current version of liberalism. Ergo, this pamphlet should have been custom written for me. Alas, not by far. This a despicable piece of a lowest of the low kind of hate and libel. Although some statements may be even true, the way they are presented is unexcusable. Moreover, even if one disregards the authors sewer-type style, he does commit the very sins that he accuses the liberals of: namely spewing theories without a shred of factual evidence. Avoid like the plague
2580741
The intellectual bankruptcy of this latest and silliest entry in the Christian Victimization sweepstakes is revealed on its cover: The symbol that best represents this sacred holiday is ... a gaudily decorated tree?!!

Meanwhile "liberal" is purposely conflated with "secularist" to engender maximum outrage. Add in a few baseless accusations punctuated *liberally* with scare words from the Victims' Lexicon ("plot", "ban"), et voila -- instant jeremiad.

Feh.
631306
I like steamy historicals, but this was too much.  It's wrongly classified as historical romance - it should be classified as erotica.  It's laughable to have the "hero" wax on about morality in the case of his mother, when he accosts and fondles and then repeatedly screws the heroine, a supposed lady, in public against a wall behind a screen.  And the scripture reading before they copulate is more than I can stomach. It was offensive to me. I generally trust RT Reviews, which gave it 4 1/2 stars, but this time I'm disappointed.  I could not finish this book and am sorry I actually paid for it instead of trying the library.
1093403
In brief, this work from the mid-1800's is the story of a good man lured into a series of progressively bad, then evil deeds, which haunt him until his end.  The title is misleading, as it is neither a romance nor about sisters. In Victorian terms, this is a "lurid" novel with a slow, twisty plot that has almost no romance to it by today's standards.  Think of it as in the line of  Edgar Allan Poe's story "The Tell-Tale Heart" in novel length.  More after I talk about the author a bit.

Richard Dowling, pen name for Marcus Fall, was an unsuccessful novelist of the Victorian era who turned out over 60 books, only a few of which are currently available.  This book is the only free one on Amazon.  Six more of his books are currently available on  Project Gutenberg, which is the source for this edition.  He was Irish, and said once that he could either write great novels (Dickens for example) or "unclean", which would sell, which is what he wrote.  A brief biography is available here [...] or more can be found in Wikipedia. (I found this information after I read these three volumes and wondered about him and the odd title of the book.)

This novel is the story of Henry Walter "Wat" Grey, a small city banker in England in the days when small independent banks still existed.  He inherits the bank from his father and runs it successfully until he loses a great sum of money in investing in the Confederate States during the American Civil War.  Driven by the need to cover his losses, he proceeds to a series of coverups and embezzlements, culminating in the use of an old wealthy miser's money that was intended for his only daughter to keep the now-fallacious reputation of his bank's solvency alive.

When the old miser is dying, Wat is appointed executor and guardian of the then-20 year old daughter's money.  Wat at this time is 45, and the temptation of marrying the young, completely sheltered 20 year old daughter to hide his disgrace overwhelms him and obsesses him to the point of further evil deeds and, ultimately, to his end.

The pace of the story is admittedly slow, almost to the point of exasperation,  but it is rather compulsive reading.  I did skip some parts where the descriptions of the obsessions  of Wat became tiresome and added little to the advancement of the story, but I did finish it.  I think the author intended the slowness to enhance the reader's understanding of how muddled this once-good man's thinking became.  (Or it's just bad writing!)
It is not a long book although it is in three volumes, and can be read in one day.

I gave this book 4 stars because it is mostly well-written, and I did get drawn into the relentless downward spiral of Wat's mind to the point where I had to finish the book to see what the ending could be - other than the worst possible (he threatens suicide several times).  The ending was rather just, I thought, and although not surprised by it, I was surprised at feeling relief that this man's self-caused sufferings were at an end without further damage to others.

Today's reader would probably find this book too slow or too overly-dramatic.  But if you read -all- of "Jane Eyre" and "Wuthering Heights", you might enjoy this book.  If you like Edgar Allan Poe, especially "The Tell-Tale Heart", this reads like an extended story of his.  Great literature it is not, but it is a fairly well-told, twisty, creepy story leavened with some positive moments.
812448
This book raises ignorance to a level near sublime. It is wretchedly prejudiced against the Germans, blind to the suffering of the Russian soldiers, and maniacal in its insistence on digging out racial prejudice. I have read many works of history, and a good few on the Great War. This is an infamous performance and a shameful waste of one's time and money.
2194406
I only paid $4.99 for this dreadful book and I feel cheated. I was hoping for an interesting journey through our quirky and sometimes just silly U.S historical sites but what I got was a book that does nothing but preach about the evils of our "vile" forefathers and how insensitive they (and we) are. Luck for us that Mr. Loewen is here to enlighten.
You can tell this was written by a sociology professor and not a history professor
3770134
Read some of the other reviews for discussion of the utterly horrible history in this travesty.
But also be aware that the falsification of history is presented with hateful bigotry.
Christians are rapists, murderers, anti-science idiots. They want to kill and oppress.
 A cliche from old westerns was the guy in a black hat is a villain.
In this movie, if a character is identified as a Christian, he is about to rape or kill or steal.
  I do not know if this bigotry is in the book. But it pervades this movie.

Amazon needs to change the star system to include Zero and Less than Zero stars.
This would be a Minus 5-Star.
3194334
This idea is similar to the main thesis in "Not A Fan" (by Kyle Idleman) which has also come out recently.  For anyone who grew up as I did in a time of punitive religion, with sins in neat categories of mortal and venial, with purgatory looming just after death even if you had confessed everything and tried really, really hard to be good, and with the idea that Jesus is crucified all over again (and it's YOUR fault!) every Sunday at Mass, this book is going to be like a lifeline thrown to a drowning person.

Never mind the theological quibbles-- just read the Bible!  The message of faith, love, and forgiveness is in there for anyone to see.  Jesus said "I have not come to judge the world, but to save it."  Simple.  Impossible to misunderstand, right?  Wrong.  The Church has consistently and deliberately misunderstood it almost from the outset.  I say almost from the outset because I date the day when the Church lost its holiness as the same day that Constantine decided that he was going to make it the official religion of the Roman Empire, with himself as its secular head.  Suddenly the idea of Christ the suffering servant vanished, and in its place came hierarchy modeled on the pagan world, a growing distance between clergy and laity, a monstrous set of rules and myths and layers of clergy who (let's face it) considered themselves far better than the people they were supposed to serve.  In fact, some of the laity was immediately reduced to the status of "non-person"-- namely, women and illiterates, peasants, and anyone who could not be relied upon to endow the Church with as much lucre as he was capable of scraping together.  So Christianity in the West was treated to such abominations as rood screens so that half the time the congregation could not even see what was going on up on the altar, where the priest was doing mysterious things on a raised platform with his back to the congregation, indulgences; the worship of bits of bone and wood; a cast of saints that made pagan pantheons seem sparse; the amassing of enormous wealth; and the Church's even darker train of antisemitism, abuse, hubris, and pharisaical self-congratulation.

There are people who are happy only when fenced inside a thicket of rules and rituals and meaningless dogma, but these people are not Christians.  A Christian has only two rules: love God with everything in you, and love your neighbor, and take care of him/her as you would take care of yourself. Christianity is not a religion, but a relationship, a one-on-one relationship with our "Creator, Defender, Redeemer, and Friend."

So if this book, and its cousin "Not A Fan" can bring even one person to an understanding of the love and forgiveness immediately available to him/her, it was worth the time and trouble taken to write it.  A wonderful, inspiring, and true message, one guaranteed to send any true seeker to his/her grateful knees in love, repentance, and thanksgiving.

I found Christ quite unexpectedly, or rather I should say, I found that Christ had always been there, but I had been blinded from childhood by this same impenetrable thicket of rules, rituals, and punishment, and was incapable of understanding Him and Who He is.  "Behold, I stand at the door and knock; and for anyone who bids Me enter, I will come in and will dine with him, and he with Me." What a beautiful promise! This book will tell you how to open that promised door and begin your everlasting friendship with your Savior.
808984
I saw this movie at home last night and I was appalled.  They took Jane Austen's simple, exciting plot, marvellous characters of the kind only Jane Austen can create, and ruined it completely.  Where was Aunt Norris' gnawing nastiness?  Sir Thomas' dignity (the movie makers made him into some kind of lecher who abused slaves in the worst way in Antigua!)?  Lady Bertram's humorous lassitude?  Fanny Price's father's embarrassing (but to us highly amusing) vulgarity?  And am I the only one who noticed the slightly lesbian tones in Mary Crawford's attentions to Fanny, especially when Fanny has to take off her wet clothes?  Good grief!

Jane Austen must be turning in her grave.

The only reason I am giving this movie one star is because of the costumes.  They are beautiful.  Everything else about the movie is appalling.
776631
This book is easily one of the poorest excuses for scholarship that I have ever encountered. The authors blatantly engage in the single biggest sin for a historian -- interpreting historical events through a contemporary (and biased) lens, and make laughably absurd claims, ranging from reading an innocuous hand position in a fresco as an obscene gesture aimed at the pope to declaring the depiction of another figure's backside as Michelangelo "mooning" Julius II.

There's a reason why this book has been uniformly dismissed as frivolous nonsense by authorities in the fields of both Renaissance history and art history; namely, there's not even the slightest shred of historical or artistic substantiation for the authors' fanciful hypothesis that Michelangelo included secret symbols in the frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel insulting the pope, promoting Jewish mysticism (i.e., the celebrity fad known as "Kabbalah"), and encouraging "bridge-building" to the Jewish faith. The authors, who happen to be Jewish themselves, flagrantly project their own twenty-first century attitudes onto Michelangelo's work of art from 500 years ago, leading them to interpret it based on what they wish it to represent rather than what it actually does.

The fact of the matter is that the authors here shamelessly and transparently attempted to capitalize on the runaway success of "The DaVinci Code" by co-opting the formula for Dan Brown's novel (Renaissance artist + famous work of art + esoteric symbolism involving Church-related controversy) and simply swapping Leonardo and his Mona Lisa with Michelangelo and his Sistine Chapel. Brown at least had the intellectual integrity to limit his imagination to the world of fiction. The hacks who authored this work of pseudo-scholarship disgracefully and dishonestly try to pass off their fantasy as history.

Brazenly unheedful of the historical method, lacking substantiation and truth, derivative of a premise stolen from a novel, and utterly ridiculous in every conceivable way, this book is beneath contempt and not worth the paper it is printed on.
1038100
If I could,I would give this book ZERO stars.  Although it is a well written and researched historical novel, I kept asking myself "WHAT is WRONG with this author!?". It seems she has a perverse delight in all the ugliness she describes in utter detail (without a shred of redemption or hope). It is unnecessarily macabre to the extreme and describes utter and complete ugliness, depravity, perversion, cruelty, and despair WITH ENTHUSIASM AND RELISH.  ALL ugliness, ALL the time.  It's unrealistic.

After reading this novel, the most abject horrors described by Charles Dickens, would seem like paradise in comparison. Holman REALLY "gets into" the grotesque and disgusting. Sick Sick Sick.