Blasphemy by Douglas Preston

Wyman Ford, ex-CIA agent, ex-monk, and widower, is sent to investigate the delays in getting multi-billion dollar Isabella online. Isabella, the most powerful particle accelerator ever built, has been designed to explore what happened at the moment of the “Big Bang”, hopefully contributing to the solution of the world’s energy problems. This huge project, located underground, inside the Red Mesa on the Navajo Indian Reservation becomes the focus of the U.S. President, the Christian fundamentalist movement and its Navajo neighbors. And Isabella does change the world, in ways that no one—except one man-- expected.

This book took me awhile to get into. The story took forever to set up and the action only intensified in the last 50 pages or so. And Douglas Preston seems to have a pretty heavy-handed message here. Some readers, in fact, have accused him of being anti-Christian and anti-God as a result of this story. 

I saw this book as asking questions rather than making statements, actually. How much of religion is man made? Is a Christian defined by the views he/she claims or by his/her actions? Once a Christian transgresses Christ’s commandments (adultery and murder being the most obvious ones), does he/she remain a follower of the Prince of Peace? Are damaged people more vulnerable to spiritual manipulation? How can one determine the truth when lies are so emotionally and passionately presented? Because this book is full of people who lie—many believe what they’re saying, but they’re still lying. In reality, this is a genuine problem for every person living. Who do we believe and how do we discern truth? The world is full of passionate and convincing liars and it's hard to know how to find or recognize truth.

The book was okay. It wasn’t gripping (until those last few pages) and it was a little bit predictable—the crazy extreme Right, the ascendancy of science…these are common themes both in literature and in reality these days. It caused me to think for a few moments. But I don’t think I’ll read more Douglas Preston.

Language: Some foul language sprinkled throughout the book—one or two F-bombs.
Sex: Unmarried sex—one incident, no description