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10 April 2006

Book Review: Prayers for the Assassin

Let me start off by saying I enjoyed reading Robert Ferrigno's newest book. This is the first book of his that I've read, and I may go back and read some of his other works.

That said, I would like to voice my biggest criticism before getting to the god parts. The Arabic word Dhimmi never appears in the work, although there are Dhimmi characters. Also the tax that dhimmi's pay to stay free in an Islamic nation isn't mentioned until page 392 (of 397), when...Na I'll let you read it to find out why. Now some people will not see this as very much, but in the present War On Terror, I find this comforting to the enemy.

Other than that it is a great read, you are swept along with an interesting group of Islamists, Moderate Muslims, Catholics and plain old killers. The back story of how the US came to be two separate, but unequal, nations; one Muslim one Christian, is filled with things that will make you go HHMMM!
I keep hearing comparisons to the novel Fatherland, from a few years ago, but I don't see anything more in common than the pairing of a man and a woman in search of the truth. This is a novel that has real questions that we do not have the answers to, unlike the question of what happen to the Jews of Europe. There the answers existed in this real world, not in the alternate universe of Fatherland. Here in Prayers we have not yet faced the cold facts of May 19, 2015, a day that if it were to happen would throw the nation into a tailspin. And although I know that other review have given away more of the story, my attitude is you just have to read it for yourself.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

an honest appraisal, jimmy.
dhimmitude may not have been mentioned until page 392 but there were frequent examples of it scattered throughout the book, ie female catholic professor saying "if i was muslim I'd be chairman of the department, and if i was an arab, I'd be president of the university." part of the problem is the book is meant as a thriller with heft, so i laid off much of the technical aspects in favor of dynamic storytelling. stay tuned.
best
robert
rcferrigno@comcast.net

jimmytheleg said...

Point taken.
But again as I said a fun read.