After skimming a few hundred pages as quickly as possible, I finally finished Leon Uris’ A God in Ruins. It’s one of the rare books that I debated putting down - usually no matter how bad a book is, I keep going to the end rather than leave the story unfinished.

Amazon.com has a bunch of customer reviews that explain what’s wrong with the book, but here’s a few issues I had:

• Handsome good guys, ugly bad guys. Every hero is a square-jawed, cowboy stud and every villain has weaselly eyes, loose morals and a thin moustache. Observe Uris’ description of a villainous senator:
  

  Form-fitting suit, Hoover collar, and the big mustache that small men of the world wear to send a message of their macho. The handshake told Quinn [the hero] that the counsel had not made his way up through hard labor.

  Read also this description of a heroine:
  

  Painted-on leather pants, bare midriff, an open blouse knotted under her breasts, glowing lipstick.

  Throughout the novel, Uris seems to equate physical beauty with goodness. Naturally every story has good guys and bad guys, but he goes out of his way to describe the gorgeousness of being good and the unattractiveness of being bad.

• Honesty = incredible crudeness. You can tell characters are having a heart-to-heart, soul-baring discussion when they start crudely insulting each other. The process usually goes: 1) casual conversation, 2) horrifyingly crude insults, 3) “I love you, man” make-ups and 4) ultimate truthful statement from the soul. Yes, people let their guard down when being truthful with loved ones, but not everyone swears like a sailor when they want to talk honestly.
• It’s outdated. Several times throughout the novel, the writer refers to the amoral debauchery of Bill and Hillary Clinton, as though Clinton’s affair were the absolute worst scandal the presidency had experienced. In some ways this is just bad timing - the book was published in 1999, and much of our ideas about the presidency and the executive branch have changed since 9/11. It’s also jarring to read of an American where gun control is the absolute worst evil in America, rather than terrorism or invasion of security.
  
• The writer is out of his depth when talking about the Internet. A major character in the book makes millions off a computer security device called the Growler, which is often described as a “rat’s nest of wires” and nothing else. I understand that the Internet is really just a plot device so that the eeeeeevil Republican president can rise to power, but it seems like the writer should at least have a basic idea of how those tubes get information around the Interweb.
• It’s a bit paranoid (SPOILER ALERT). The climax of the book comes when the Democratic candidate, adopted by Catholics, announces…due dramatic music…his birth parents are actually Jewish. In the novel, this triggers a “Krystallnacht” where Klansmen and Muslims across American begin rioting and destroying Jewish property. Meanwhile, the evil president holds back the National Guard and waits for the rioting to take its toll, so that he can swoop in and act like a hero.

I think the paranoia highlights my main issue with the novel - it just doesn’t ring true. It does not expand my horizons or bring me to a deeper understanding of the presidency, because the characters don’t act believably and the America Uris writes about does not illuminate any larger truth about America or the American people.

A friend of mine got this novel at a used book store for a dollar, but it’s currently selling for a penny on Amazon. Even at that price, I’d recommend skipping it and instead reading Uris’ glorious QB VII. It’s unfortunate that Uris’ career ended with such poor writing, but his many other novels establish his legacy as a great writer.