This came up as a recommendation somewhere on the internet. I no longer have the article, but it spoke lovingly about this work, most likely praising it as ‘the Exorcist in space’.
I think it speaks pretty poorly of modern times that we have to codify the arts in such a way – “you should read this book, it’s Harry Potter set in a former soviet state” “you should watch this movie, its a retelling of the life of Richard M Nixon set in the lost city of Atlantis.” That seems to be all you need to do to get an idea green lit.
Dumber still, I fell for it.
Largely speaking, the above paragraph is about all the synopsis you need. But there is a little more, so I invite you to read the rest of this paragraph in the internal voice of the dumbest person you know: Sacrament is ‘the Exorcist in Space’. But the main character isn’t any Exorcist, he is an exorcist with a traumatic past. He is having a crisis of faith. He lusts after women, including his beautiful nun companion. And he lives in a universe where religion is outlawed, and people caught practicing religion are taken to reeducation camps, where the ‘religion’ centers of their brain are removed with a drill.
How was this not written by an American? How was this not written by Frank Peretti?
I cannot begin to describe how bad the writing in this series is. I mean, all of it. A character introduces himself ‘Spymaster Marlov’. That’s a bit of a weird title. I mean, we all know what a ‘director of foreign intelligence’ is, but who would go around calling themselves ‘spymaster’? I don’t think the writer of this has even in his life met an atheist, or for that matter a single person who lost their faith. There are lots of scenarios wherein a person might lose their faith, being possessed by a demon and then having your priest admit to lusting after you is not an avenue to losing your faith. Really, because you were just possessed by a fucking demon.
I really cannot get over how cartoonishly bad the writing is.
There are a ton of interesting things that one can do with the notion of religion in space, but I do not trust this writer to get anywhere near those interesting ideas. There are four more volumes to this series. I won’t be reading them. Does this count as a DNF?
Failures in Polymathy 