I loved every single thing about this book. Except the writing. Or maybe the translation. Probably the translation. Either way, what could have been a story to blow The DaVinci Code out of the water, was instead a worthy read for only those that are interested in the Voynich Manuscript, astronomy, and/or the intersection of faith and science.

I am incredibly fascinated with all of those things - except astronomy, of course - so I couldn't give up on the book. For those unaware of the Voynich Manuscript, it is a real, illustrated manuscript believed to be about 500 years old. It's full of beautiful ink and watercolour drawings that encompass chemistry/alchemy, botanicals, and astronomy, and it's written in a language that doesn't exist anywhere else. It remains to this day undecipherable. The manuscript currently resides at the Beinecke Library of Yale University and they have it online here.

Anything that has remained untranslatable for over 500 years becomes an unavoidable conspiracy theorist magnet, but the author of this book includes an introduction, where he makes it clear that other than the creation of the MC and his two friends, everything else in the book is historically accurate; all the other characters are real and their back-stories were kept intact without creative license. Knowing this also kept me glued to the book when the prose would have sent me fleeing long before chapter 2.

The book is heavily centered in the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits). (They owned the Voynich Manuscript until 1912 when Voynich secretly bought it from them.) My gender aside, the Jesuits are my people. I make no secret of my faith in God and my faith in science; a stance that neatly pisses off everyone in one go: atheists because I believe in God, and those calling themselves Christians because I'm a heretic for accepting the Big Bang (first hypothesised by a Belgian priest*, btw) and evolution. The Jesuits also find no contradiction between God and science and in fact, most of the major contributions to science - experimental physics, specifically - in the 17th century were made by Jesuits. They weren't slackers in the 18th century either.

So, a story about a real coded manuscript, in its historically accurate setting, involving science and theology, taking place in a Jesuit school in Castile. And I haven't even mentioned the secret tunnels, hidden passages and coded messages, or the major supporting characters that include Tycho Brahe, Kepler, Dee, Kelly, Galileo and Cassini.

Unfortunately, as I've already said, the writing translation is the major sticking point. The narrative was choppy and there was a general abuse of pronouns, leaving the reader sometimes wondering who was being talked about at any given time. Dialogue jumped around too so that there were a few leaps of logic I couldn't follow because I couldn't parse the writing. The ultimate care the author takes to make sure the history and the science are explained carefully (and sometimes repetitively), inclines me to fault the translation. The author's love and knowledge of the subject matter screams from the page, as does his concern that the reader understand as much of the hard stuff as is possible, so it doesn't make sense that the story itself was written with so little care.

If I were only rating the writing, this would be 1 star. But the subject matter and the plot were 5 stars, so in the end I split the difference and went with 3. Don't bother with this one if you're only looking for a thriller or adventure, but if you're fascinated by the other stuff, maybe see if your library has this one and give is a go. It'll be work, but it'll be fascinating too.

(* Georges Lemaître was the first to formally propose his hypothesis of the primeval atom, which became known as the Big Bang Theory, first published in 1931 in Nature. He was a Jesuit priest and professor of physics. He was also the first to note the expansion of the universe, and the first to derive Hubble's law and made the first estimation of what is called Hubble's constant - all misattributed to Hubble, at least in name.) ( )

Strains the imagination upon occasion. Enjoyed the relationships between the primary characters.
The initial graffiti scenario almost caused me to give up , but I plodded on to the end ( )

Though I congratulate the author on not being a credulous fool with regard to American retroactive-murder-prosecution conspiracy theories, and though he clearly has interest in and has researched the centerpiece of this thriller - the Voynich manuscript - his extensive exposition is not woven into the plot, does not foreshadow, and carries as little emotional impact as his unnecessarily detailed descriptions of the narrator's computer system, which now accomplish little more than dating the story.

Only a tiny number of characters demonstrate distinctive personality traits; a great deal of narrative time is given over to the character's plausible but tiresomely described frustration with both high school students and city council corruption; some of the choppy wording could imaginably be attributed to the translator, but it is impossible so to attribute the abundance of uninterestingly stated, rhetorically unconnected, blandly factual paragraphs, or for the hamhanded characterizations of the other principal characters, John and Juana.

Of course there are mysteries to be found surrounding the actual Voynich manuscript, which is, as the narrator reminds us several times, of uncertain provenance, beautiful, and unintelligible. There aren't a lack of mysteries, of the usual historical kind (was this theory first generated by this thinker or was s/he taught it, or was she inspired more or less directly by a particular teacher? where was this historical figure during this month in the middle of a war in his or her home country?), surrounding the four astronomers that fascinate the main character of this novel. There is, however, a lack of narrative craft in the relation of the existing mysteries, in the creation of thriller tension, and in the development of both setting and characters.

A disappointing treatment of a thrilling subject, this novel might have ridden in on the waves generated by conspiracy bestseller Dan Brown, but was deservedly swept back out with the tide. - Though I do hope his trashing of the "Kepler murdered Brahe" theory did contribute to putting that silly rumor to rest. ( )

The Book of God and Physics by Enrique Joven, while interesting, is poorly written. I believe that the flaws do not result so much from translation issues as from the fact that the author is a scientist first and a writer second. He relies principally on the nature of the material being discussed to carry the story, and so it will be your interest in the Voynich MS, or the history of science, or the politics involved, which will carry you through the book.

The story is reminiscent of both Umberto Eco (which I have read) and Da Vinci Code-like thrillers (which I have not). The writing style also put me in mind of the Cuckoo's Egg, a little-read but real-life mystery of tracking computer hackers. Both tend to be over-dramatic in a way that makes the progression feel unrealistic (although, in the case of the Cuckoo's Egg, it actually happened that way).

My problem with The Book of God and Physics is that the characters, except for the Jesuit narrator, were so obviously excuses to introduce more material, rather than being part of a real interaction. No real-life high schooler scours the internet for little-known biographical information on Kepler, Brahe, Kircher and others, brings it to his teacher, and shows himself not only complete master of the nuances of historical debate but asks the very questions that further the teacher's own research--using apparently nothing more than Wikipedia and similar sources. Simon, the student, was too obviously a Socratic stand-in, existing to allow the author to insert large chunks of historical material necessary for the connection of the Jesuits and astronomers Kepler and Brahe to the manuscript. Juana, too, seemed entirely unbelievable - what evangelical Christian woman fully commits herself to a public-display-of-affection-type relationship with a man who "turns out" to be atheist? That she would unreasonably refuse to deal with him is less unbelievable than the idea that she wouldn't have ascertained something so important to her before starting a relationship. Because Juana represents American-style evangelicalism, her quirks and hypocrisy stand for more than just her own nature (although, as the only female character, it no doubt unintentionally seems to stand for the irrationality of women).

The author uses the novel as a bit of a soapbox against Intelligent Design by positioning the Jesuits as more open-minded than the evangelical Christians who espouse it. Again, though, by painting the opposed sides too starkly, and making the Jesuit narrator too angrily pro-evolution, the author detracted from the effectiveness of his example. Anyone can knock down a straw man; if your evangelicals are knee-jerk and your portrayal of intelligent design is a caricature, your argument loses some of its strength. It would have been better to leave those polemics out of the dialogue and instead rely on our feelings for the characters to make that point.

Although other reviewers felt that the mystery wanders, I actually felt that it was too contrived. Here is a code which has not been solved for centuries, and yet for the three investigators every conversation bears fruit; there is never a dead end or a wrong turn; each step forward turns up a further clue. Even rare astronomical events bring clues (like in The Hobbit, the characters *happen* to be at the crucial location near a crucial, centuries-rare happening). All researchers should be so lucky. ( )

I kept thinking this book would improve. My impression is that the translation was lacking in literary value. Perhaps in Spanish it would be better, but very clumsy in English. ( )