Since The Godmakers and Dune I've tended to pick up those Frank Herbert novels which appear in resale shops and used bookstore sale shelves. I've been into science fiction since childhood, picked up an interest in religion as a young adult, and now favor writers who treat of both at once. While some of Herbert's books have been disappointments--especially the later Dune novels, this wasn't.

I've hesitated for many years to read the The Jesus Incident, on account of less than superlative reviews and the dubious plot. I feel I've wasted my time going again my intuition.

The story is about Ship, a planet called pandora and a society of people controlled brutishly by its (Ship appointed?) ruler. Ship wants worShip. pandora wants... who cares? people are mincemeat, they're too busy dying to express wishes.

But what the story is I cannot tell. Things go down the drain, and that's about it. And in the end, some radical left miracle happens, jebus is reborn and everybody rejoices or something. Really, some mangled nonsense like that.

I've found no relatable or likable characters. The prose is weak. The world building lame. I feel the contribution of the second author did nothing to improve on anything.

Quick Review: Interesting, but not my style

Long-winded, rambling review (minor spoilers):

While I really liked the idea of an omnipotent spaceship floating around in space, making and destroying worlds, messing around in people's heads, and demanding that everyone WorSHIP it, I'm not so sure about some of the other things in this book.

One thing that irked me was the attitudes of the male characters towards the females. Now, I'm sure that some of this can be explained by the fact that this book was first published in 1979, back when women were routinely harassed and men spent hours in their 'cubbies,' sipping crappy wine, gazing at their erotic wall hangings, spying on the honies with surveillance feeds, and generally being creepy.

I admit, I have a tendency to latch onto little details, so I still vividly remember how the character of Waela was introduced as an awesome, powerful fighter; a survivor who through quick-thinking has managed to stay alive on a deadly planet...and oh, yeah, she hunches over a lot, because she's tall and men don't like tall women...

WHAT??!!

Anyways, back to the plot, which which not about tall women trying to disguise their hideous height... It was more about...Umm... well, an omnipotent spaceship, a frozen guy who changes his last name and becomes the devil, a poet that likes to talk to kelp and caress tentacled-hot-air-balloons, a female med-tech (who has to be told about atoms by the poet!!) that goes back in time and sees Jesus, some creepy old men plotting...something..., oh right, and someone named Jesus Lewis that doesn't seem to be of any particular importance...

And that's just the half of it! You could probably find a ton of religious allusions within the book, if that's your game... All that stuff about rocks... Peter?


The Positives!!

Favorite Character: The Ship! I mean, SHIP!

Favorite Alien: Avata, everyone's favorite hallucinogenic kelp/hot-air balloon

Favorite Scene/Chapter: The early E-Clone massacre, which introduced us to some of the deadly planets' creatures and demons...

Gripping. Religious-based, like Dune, but very edgy and compelling. The savior of humanity and the choices and sacrifices made in the name of human survival. If you enjoyed Dune then you will absolutely love The Jesus Incident.

Spoiler free.

Really not sure how this book has such a fanbase. If I'd not gotten this in audiobook form, I doubt I would have finished, but hell, it carried me through household chores well enough. This review will probably be pretty scattered, which will kind of reflect in itself how I feel about this book.

I can't help but wonder if this book just hasn't aged well, or if I read it "too late" or something, in both or either a personal age and generational sense. The setting and the concept is interesting, and is a lot of what kept me listening, hoping to catch more of it, but...There was such a massive amount of description that seemed to be missing, and it felt like a crime given the opportunity provided by such a backdrop - completely foreign, a blank canvas, but left with just stick figures and basic shapes. It felt bare-boned and often was just ambiguous or had me not bothering to imagine the scene because I had so little info or frame of reference. Honestly, in terms of a few of the places, I don't think I'd be able to describe them in detail, let alone relativity from one place to another even though a lot of things take place therein. I just let it hang and kept going.

The first fifth or so of the book is very enticing; I was really hooked and had that sense of "Ooo, this is gonna get goooood." ...That plateaued by the first third, went stagnant around halfway, and completely flat-lined by the end, which was so anti-climactic and devoid of satisfaction that it brought my entire perception of the book under a magnifying glass all at once as if to highlight its missing pieces. It promised a lot and totally didn't deliver. The end just felt trite (which is why I wonder if I just didn't read this book soon enough) and rushed, even a cop-out.

While there is a sense of a plot introduced from the very beginning, it remains more in the background and focuses more on the characters. I like character-focused stuff, so that was fine and made for good listening. In fact, around three quarters in, I kind of forgot the original presentation for a while because there was so much of it - it stole the spotlight, as it were. The story is the type in which the reader is sort of thrown into (which was mostly done well), so there isn't really character :development: as much as reveal. That said, there didn't seem to be that much variation between them except from the poet, whose introspection and examination was probably the most interesting but one of the least explored. I can understand keeping his inner workings a bit of a mystery or aloof given the whole, but it was just odd after the amount of offered info in the beginning. Anyway, the sense of characters lacking variation, though, could be from Brick's narration unfortunately.

I didn't read the prequel to the Pandora Sequence series, but I didn't feel that left me in the dark in any way at all. I think some of the "confusion" some reviewers might be experiencing is just that style of being thrown into the story/setting and having it revealed as mentioned....but given the book starts with someone being removed from cryostatis/hibernation after years and years and years and being thrown into the situation at hand, it was completely appropriate in my opinion. There were definitely some vague concepts - I had to really consider the purpose the 'flower room' served aside from atmosphere in the end and was left as underwhelmed by the conclusion as with the rest - but they didn't serve as an aspect of confusion for me.

As for the exploration of humanity and questions about God and the rest of the philosophies: It was not deep, not provoking. I took it all as info being discovered as new because of being a humanity devoid of close-hand knowledge of its origins or sense of self, hand-fed to that point without much reason to think about it, so was surprised to find out this is a lot of what makes the book famous. As a reader, it was just atmosphere, not food for thought. This also and again leads me to question whether I read the book too late, but I'm pretty good about giving my head a retro-active frame of reference to appreciate the message for its time-period, when it was introduced and all that, so this makes it all the more flat. Young adult fiction I've read in the last few years has given me more concepts to think about than this book.

My overall sense of the book was this:
You know when you think you've got a writing idea or it's in the works, and you have dreams or daydreams where ideas/visuals/imaginations sort of flow or prod at you? You maybe make a note or keep it in the back of your head, or write it down roughly to come back to later so you don't forget the little things.... Almost the entire book felt like reading two guys' collection of these snippets - just rough, a draft, lacking, unpolished...with the intrigues and main characters identified but an ending not figured out yet. Yet, somehow, it was just published with the end, like I mentioned, feeling rushed and a cop-out. Mix in some poetic flair (Ransom's, I'm sure) to dress up basic human philosophies, too. There definitely were polished pieces, but their distinction from the rest of the text was so bright that they just serve to glaringly highlight how rough and unfinished-feeling the rest of the whole is. This is doubly unsatisfying/disappointing with the knowledge that there were two authors to oversee this work's fruition AND an author's note at the end stating neither of their ideas were ever excluded or thrown out. Ship only knows what would be left if they were.


...

As an aside, I'm not a fan of Scott Brick's narration - I've listened to a few of his readings now, and I have to do some internal work to imagine the words on the page, how it probably looks on the page, because he seems to impose his voice (in the narrative sense) onto each book in the same way. Unfortunate, as his inflections and delivery can be very gripping...just a shame it's a blanket style. If you're interested in the book, I recommending the ol' conventional read.

The Jesus Incident is a science fiction novel that follows a group of colonists on a savage planet as they try to live with the credibility of the AI that now controls everything and calls itself God. YES if you think that's a lot to unpack, wait till you start the book!!
The thing about Sci-Fi novels is that they require a considerable amount of detail to make sure that the readers can connect with their world. From a drawn out map of colonies to extensive descriptions of flora and fauna in Pandora, this novel is no different in painting a vivid picture that sometimes got a little hard to keep up with.
The themes in this book were very diverse and varied from religious violence, corruption and racism. However, there were parts where I couldn't quite understand what was going on until more context was given much later. The ending also felt quite abrupt which was really disappointing cause the build up seemed so interesting!
Despite of that, this was a refreshing book I knew I had to read the second I read its description. Also, I'm pretty sure this novel could've been an inspiration for the movie 'Avatar'. Besides the few things I didn't like about the book, it's kind of fascinating to think that a novel published in 1979 (during an AI winter too) could be so innovative in its vision of what technology could achieve.

4.5/ 5
An ode to the sexual magnetism of giant kelp.

I love books that take big swings, and this is a book full of them.
#1 What if you knew your god, and it made a request of you: worship. Also your god is a ship.
#2 What if your society could make clones, and some of them are very weird, and rioting.
#3 What if you were tasked with colonizing a planet full of strange and deadly creatures a la Jack Vance: fast freaky things with teeth, worms that eat your eyes, giant sky jellyfish, etc.
#4 An ocean full of sentient kelp. A woman that admits she is thrown into a sexual frenzy by said kelp.
#5 The actual Jesus is somewhere in the book for a bit.

The characters are magnificent and the plot is stellar. Can't recommend it enough. The only thing I didn't love was the very last chapter, but that's only because I dislike happy endings. Read it read it read it!

Any book that Frank Herbert has a part in is going to be interesting, but this novel is not one of my favorites because it is almost a Bible story preaching that we need to worship God appropriately. In this case, God is a ship that can hear your thoughts, snap you back in time to Jesus's crucifixion, and yet refuses to intervene when lives are on the line. This God/ship is all about testing humans and their clones by putting them on a tough planet and planting lecherous, greedy, devils in their midst. The worst man hides the fact that he is a clone while he mistreats clones, creates gross, mutant versions of the clones, and uses these mutants to torture his shipmates into bad behavior that he can use against them if they ever resist his orders.

The correct worShip the God/ship wants is for people to treat all beings fairly. Ironically, the horrible planet the crew is on is much nicer than anyone thought at first because it has a lifeform that rescues banished shipmates and can teach them to control reality with their minds.

The problem with making one of your characters (in this case, the "Ship") quite literally godlike (omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience) is that it takes all tension and stakes away from the rest of the story. Instead of "how will the people solve this problem/survive on this planet?" the main question becomes "when will the god swoop in and fix everything?"

It doesn't help that the book is desperately trying to have some deeper theme that never comes together. The planet's named Pandora. There's a virgin(ish) birth. A poet is the only human who can communicate with the aliens. A character literally travels back in time to watch Jesus get crucified. (This last one is where the book lost me.) None of these come together in a satisfactory way.

Overall it was readable (much more so than its dated prequel novella Destination: Void) but that's the only praise I can give.

Dune is one of my favorite books of all time, so I decided to finally branch out and read some of Frank Herbert's other none-Dune related works. My first pick was The Jesus Incident, which after reading it I found out is actually the sequel to Destination Void - D'oh! Nevermind though, you don't need to read Destination Void in order to understand or enjoy The Jesus Incident.

This book has a large cast of characters, but they had distinctive enough voices that they didn't all blur together. The story centers around a group of people who are coerced or brainwashed into worshiping a sentient ship, while trying to navigate a dangerous, alien world called Pandora. The story deals with religion, atheism, environmental issues, sexuality, technology vs humanity, greed, and unrequited love.

The world building is not as well done as Dune, but the characters are very well developed. If you enjoyed the movie Avatar I'd highly recommend checking out this book. The setting is very similar and both deal with overlapping themes.

I'd only known Frank Herbert for his "Dune" series. I loved that series. When I found this trilogy I decided to give it a try. It was very reminiscent of "Dune". I could see a lot of similarities in terms of themes and characters in this book. I will say it was enjoyable but I felt it lacked something. Looking at the page count on my Kindle and the page count on Goodreads I see a discrepancy of 200 pages. Though the Kindle version shows it as "Three Complete Novels". Now that might be because of the different formatting between the two books but as I was reading the book I felt that I was missing something. There were character developments and scenes, that while, they made sense, seemed to be "forced" or just made up with no discernible thread-going from Point A to Point D without Points B or C. Motivations seems to be made up or changed without any logic (at least to me). This could also be because the story has another author, Bill Ransom, and it's difficult to mesh two writing styles together. But overall it's a good story and I'm interested to see where the other two parts lead.

So this was frustrating and I almost didn't continue reading after a while. I don't think I'll read on to the sequels.
The characters are so underdeveloped as to be cardboard cutouts and serve only as platforms for abstract pondering and philosophical meanderings. I can get onboard with characters as personifications or positions or other rhetorical devices if there are other redeemable qualities to the story but there just were not any there for me. The world felt underdeveloped, and the plot itself felt...stale? There was a lot of political and interpersonal subterfuge and sneaky power plays, and I already don't dig that narrative. The "message" or way of worshipping they eventually realized, that by holistically embracing the oneness and potential of humanity, they embrace Ship as god, felt like it is almost a given nowadays.
The fact that they achieved that understanding through something like an LSD trip and alien-assisted boning... just seemed dated.
There's also the fact that the women are all leered at and lingered over, assessed almost automatically for their sexual desirability. Though they do some pretty cool/reckless things, they kind of remain nurses and incubators for the most part.
Overall "meh." Seemed like more dude sci-fi.