...I must admit I found the premise of the novel and the large scale developments Herbert and Ransom describe fascinating but I didn't care for most of the characters. The judge is mildly interesting, the lovers are not. There are a few other characters I haven't mentioned thus far, including a terrorist, a diplomat and ridiculously stupid historian none of whom were really engaging. Most of them seem to miss the sharpness, awareness and deep insights Herbert's more interesting characters share. Ship's unpredictable presence is also sorely missed in this novel. In short I have to really dig to find things I like in The Lazarus Effect. It is there for sure but buried a somewhat unfocussed plot, featuring bland and largely uninteresting characters. Add to that the unremarkable prose and you end up with a novel that readable but certainly not memorable. I'm hoping for better things from the concluding volume of this trilogy.

Full Random Comments review ( )

It has some interesting aspects, but the plot isn't one of them. It's much too long and gets pretty tedious in the middle. And "Ship," the most interesting character in this series (this is the sequel to The Jesus Incident), is not in this book. There's a lot of talk about Ship, hints about his returning, but about halfway through the book that angle is just dropped, which is pretty disappointing. ( )