Negative Positive
Title: Bland and disappointing
Review: Robert Stone's book, while entertaining to a degree seemed like it wanted to be more of a novel of ideas and it never quite got there. Stone's presentation of faith commitments(variety of Jewish, Muslim and Christian communities) seemed distressingly superficial with a strong preference for a universalist position, i.e. all faiths are many roads up the same mountain. That is always the position of an outsider to faith traditions and so is incapable of shedding any light on the traditions themselves or providing any insight to the readers. This is especially unfortunate because the friction of Jerusalem in this novel is the friction of a variety of faiths and the secular humanist observers. It is bland like Joseph Campbell is bland. Parallels are nice, but in the end don't explain any community's point of view. Unfortunately Damascus Gate is more like your average/mediocre thriller then it would like to be.
Is the review positive or negative? 