Sword is the third book by Kuzneski featuring the two US military characters, Payne and Jones and is a standalone story, with little connectivity between previous volumes. The author is clearly becoming more confident with the characters as the series progresses, creating more banter between the likeable protagonists. Kuzneski has adapted his writing style to feature less of the pointless cliffhangers than marred his previous book. The distracting feature of Sword of God is that for most of the book it feels like two distinctly separate plots. That said, this approach does keep the reader keen to see how they ultimately converge. In fairness, the Sword of God title is although a minor point in the story, almost added to ride the Dan Brown coattails, and as a result Sword of God is less religious-thriller than you would think. To explain the genre would be to spoil the suspense, yet the fact remains that Sword is a fascinating read, even though it's rather simple and derivative. ( )

I have finally struggled through to the end of this book but I have to admit that at least the last 150 pages (yes that's close to half of it) was to find out if it would EVER get round to the point of the plot-line which is advertised on the back of the book. I have not read James Patterson's "Murder Club" books but if he really thinks that "Kuzneski's writing has raw power" and was referring to this book (which admittedly he may not have been), I'm not going to risk it. It is possible that the author has deliberately littered his pages with cliched phrases, derivative characters and clunky exposition because he thinks it appropriate for the "blockbuster" style he is trying to write but frankly that is an insult to both "blockbuster" writers and their audience.

I am no snob when it comes to novels - years producing audio books from all kinds of novels knocked any potential for that out of me. When I read a novel I read for the same reason I watch a film or a television series - to be immersed in a story. If the quality of the writing isn't perfect but the story is engaging then that's fine by me - goodness knows there are many "well written" or "literary" novels which will put you to sleep! Give me a good story over good grammar any day. Unfortunately, Sword of God gives you neither.

REVIEW
Overall Score: 17/60
Story: 2/10 - derivative
Structure: 4/10 - all over the place, too much left undone or unsatisfactorily tied up.
Dialogue: 3/10 - cliche but not unbelievable for the characters, particularly bad when used for exposition
Characters: 3/10 - stereotypes (and I don't mean archetypes, just stereotypes)
Descriptive style: 4/10 - cliched phrasing, lack of flow mostly due to badly inserted exposition
Exposition handling: 1/10 - clunky, incongruous, often resorts to straight lecturing, inconsistently breaks rules of POV in 3rd person intimate ( )

Someone wants to blow up Mecca... ( )