Review: The Footprints of God: A Novel

The Footprints of God: A Novel by Greg Iles
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This was on my to read list for a long time. I was drawn in by the cover and read the description at the airport during a business trip several years ago and it immediately seemed like something I'd enjoy. It sounded in the realm of Dan Brown's Digital Fortress with a religious twist, sounded really interesting. I put it on my wishlist and kind of forgot about it, then one day I got a notification that it was finally available on ebook at my library. I was very excited to pick this up. I'm sad to say this did not live up to my expectations. I picked this book up and put it back down several times before finally finishing it. This book was very slow and was not the action packed sci-fi thriller I was expecting.

David Tennent our main character is a doctor assigned to monitor the ethics on a highly classified supercomputer project with some of the greatest minds ever known. David having been subjected to the new technology being used to build the computer, has begun suffering from strange side effects. In order to gain insight to the dreams and narcolepsy he's been suffering, David enlists the help of Rachel Weiss, a psychiatrist with a specialization in dream science. She thinks David is hallucinating and takes the stance that she wants to "fix" him. His dreams can't possibly be of God or Jesus, they must be an interpretation and projection of his grief of the death of his wife and daughter years earlier. Enter the Project Trinity security force who is trying their best to ensure that David doesn't do anything to jeopardize their success. These must be hallucinations because why would the NSA be trying to kill David?

David and Rachel go on a whirlwind adventure, guided by the dreams he having all the while being chased by people who are trying to kill him, the NSA. After some close calls Rachel finally starts to believe the NSA might be after them. She's kind of irritating as a character. He and Rachel finally acknowledge the romance that his been growing between them since he's been seeing her. Their relationship is a bit flat and adds nothing to the story. She doesn't trust him or believe anything he says, even after witnessing everything he says is true, yet she loves him.

With the NSA on their heels, the super computer goes live and starts taking over the internet, it does exactly what it was designed to do. David is the only one who can stop the destruction the computer has unleashed in order to protect itself. David is up against the clock to save himself, the woman he loves, the computer he helped build and humanity itself. This part of the story and the part where they go to Israel to understand David's dreams is actually pretty interesting and the pace of the story actually picks up. The problem is its only about the last 30% of the book. I'm glad I finished it, but I'm irritated that it took so long to get to the good part.

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