Read Online 30 Pieces Of Silver (Betrayed, #1) Composed By Carolyn McCray Formatted As Audio Books

you ever had a book that made you angry I mean, just totally pissed you off in the end Well for me, this book did it.


And I had such high hopes, First off, it was recommended in the synopsis both here and on Amazon by sitelinkJames Rollins, an author whose books I really enjoy, And on Amazon, it states this book "is an extremely controversial religious/historical thriller, Too controversial to be published in hardback, Please do NOT purchase this book if you were at all disturbed by the DaVinci Code or The Passion of Christ's revelations, " Well you know what, I liked sitelinkThe Da Vinci Code, and I own a DVD of The Passion of the Christ, I love historical thrillers, and I love religious fiction, so with all of this going for it, this book seemed to be right up my alley.


So what pissed me off, you ask Let me see, Probably first and foremost was the total sacrilegious nature of the book, Oh yeah, and the blasphemy, For religious fiction, those are two big nono's for me, If you are going to write a Christian historical thriller about Jesus, with John the Baptist, Mary, Mary Magdalene, the Twelve Disciples, the ministry of Jesus, the last supper, etc.
, you had better not become totally sacrilegious in the final few pages, This would be right up there with someone writing the book sitelinkLassie ComeHome, but as Lassie finally gets back to her loving home after her long journey, she crosses the highway and is smacked by anwheeler, causing her to explode into a plume of gore and dog guts.


So what was so sacrilegious about this book SPOILERS Let's see, mainly the author saying that Jesus was a total coward, a basic chicken shit, that he made up his ministry to fit the old testament scripture, that he planned to fake his death on the cross by having Mary Magdalene give him potions to drink to appear to die, but that in the end he was such a coward that he send his brave friend Judas to die on the cross in his place.
Oh, and let's see, what else, After Judas dies on the cross in his place, Jesus is murdered by his angry brother James, which makes Jesus die happy, as he could now give his earthly concerns a rest.
Oh, and as to a basic tenant of Christianity, the actual resurrection of Jesus Apparently, the author could never fathom such a thing,

And how about some of these quotes from the book: "Was the sacrifice any less because Judas lay here instead of Jesus For Christianity to be born someone had to sacrifice themselves onto that cross.
" WTF! Seriously, Ms. McCray
Or how about this quote: "We blame not Jesus for balking, but praise Judas for not flinching",
Or Jesus talking to his brother James, as James stabs him in the stomach with a knife: "Teach them, Teach them better than I," Jesus begged as the world became nothing more than a white light"

So yes, this book pissed me off.
I would not recommend it, Thankfully, Amazon had it listed as free on kindle for a couple days, so I snagged my copy for free, I would be even angrier if I had paid money for this trash,

In the end all I can think is that the author of this book must have some real issues with the Christian faith, Life is too short to read inane books,

I was interested in this book because in the review, this is compared to a Dan Brown novel, I thought this could be fun,

This is not Dan Brown! At least his plots, if not possible, at least they are plausible and clever,

This was like reading a Rambo movie, I should have know it was going to be ridiculous when the book begins with the main character about to be squeezed to death by an anaconda in the jungle, only to learn that she was participating in some kind of tribal ceremony and is thoroughly irritated when she is saved by some militia to be part of a top secret mission.


Then she just happens to have infrared scanning on her lap top to follow the bad guys, They just happen to find a helicopter to escape, They just happen to I quit reading the book when she happens to be in the Paris airport going to London but foils the escape plan and happens to get the two remaining seats on a plane to Budapest and the plane she was to take to London just happens to be bombed by the bad guys and after all this turmoil of explosions and gun fighting and danger, her laptop still works, because she niftily but handily prints the tickets from her laptop.


The storyline chapters are interspersed with some subplot that takes place inAD, filled with pseudobiblical language and dialog, Im sure at some point it merges with the real plot, But, I just didnt care to find out,

Maybe I missed it, Maybe she meant it as a Dan Brown spoof,
For fairness of this review, I am a Christian,

This is another novel about the search for the bones of Christ my alltime favorite is "A Skeleton in God's Closet", I enjoyed the action and the twists along the way, thus the reason forstars,

Do I believe Jesus died and rose again Yes, I do, That is the core of my faith as a Christian, Does reading this novel challenge my faith Not at all, I know it'sfiction and I read it as such and enjoyed it as pure fiction should be,

I will not give away the main twist at the conclusion of this, but I did find it fascinating pure bupkis, mind you but still fascinating.


For the sake of avoiding further beliefs in this review, the novel is entertaining and has a neat method for following a trail, which I enjoy in novels of this genre.
Despite the fact that the author can'decide if she wants this story to be Dan Brown, Clive Cussler, or Indiana Jones, I'm ok with the adventure partbarely.
The characters are absolute cliches and mostly annoying dingdong Lochum's dead!, The romance implausable Danielle

Steele anyone, . . fall deeply in love inhours, blah, blah, Oh, and in the middle of hot sex, she gets a clue to what they are looking for, and they just hsppily drop everything to continue "the mission.
" Hilarious.
No. What I really have a hard time with is the overall premise, While DaVinci Code gave us an aspect of Christs life to think about, this story completeley asks us to believe something entirely different happened than we believe.
Ok for some. I get that. But get your facts straight around his life to begin with to make your farfetched premise even remotely believable, One of which is Paul was NOT one of the twelve! That is just one, I might call this book controversial if it had its act together, Now it just seems like someone trying WAY too hard, Mixed emotions about the book, The action scenes were a little too overthetop, I suppose, but the story did move right along, The best part, to me, was the flashbacks to the story of Jesus and Judas told in modern language which read like a novel, I didn't find the book to be all that controversial, but the unorthodox ideas of what actually happened at and after the crucifixion of Jesus were fascinating.
OK, to be fair as a piece of writing it was probably more astar than, but the deliberately provocative idea appealed to me brave or just seeking publicity, doesn't much matter as it is a great story to play with.
Lovers of action stories and mysteries will enjoy the speed of this one it lacks the long, boring exposition/explanation that Dan Brown uses excessively in The Da Vinci Code.
The end is unexpected but in keeping with the story up to that point nice touch,

There was obviously some research done into the gnostic gospels and the early beliefs about the roles of Judas and Mary Magdalene but some inaccuracies tended to damage the image of research.
As far as I know, none of the Twelve was called Paul even as a secondary name and the apostle Paul never met Jesus, Judas also refers to The Twelve as if he is not one of them which is a little weird, The odd use of the Scottish name Kyle for Judas' brother was strange too I got the impression that this was in there as a gentle tribute to one of the author's own relatives.
It's not a biblical name, There are other minor slip ups too not serious but they do make the book less satisfactory as a read

The execution didn't quite work though.
Other people here have mentioned the need for good proofreading and editing so I won't dwell on that, but each of the episodes are a little too similar and the repetition of phrases and words can also get a bit distracting.
I lost count of the number of times we heard about "upper body strength" an ungraceful phrase at the best of times,

Monroe is an interesting character, Lochum too, Bryant was just too unbelievable for me as a soldier and a Catholic he might have had a good education and it is great to challenge stereotypes but in some cases his knowledge of obscure biblical and historical facts was overdone

I hope McCray continues writing and gets the support she needs to become a major writer.
This novel shows promise in many ways Wow, I gave a book only one star yet I read the whole book! I didn't like the book, but it had nothing to do with the advertised controversial view on biblical history.
I didn't like the book because it was not believable in the actions taking place, The action was so outrageous it was not believable, Not even for an author to take some literary license, yet this one took out the licensing bureau!

I was in the military and I have lived overseas.
There are gun battles with this book, explosions, car chases, airplane crashes, killings, underground explosions causing caveins at tourist sites, and the desecration of holy sites all motivated to get to the next archeological fact first!

All through these crazy acts, no government or city authorities seem to register this group at all.
They cause all these explosions, firefights, and chases and the rest of the world didn't impact this story, It was like the author put all these characters in a vacuum and said, "have at it" and don't worry about the rest of the world interfering on your trek, I will keep them out of it! It was just TOO much to take the book seriously, even remotely.


Lastly, here are some great scientist, archeological buffs, and religious zealots who have NO problem destroying any sacred historical place or object, REALLY, people who work their whole life preserving history destroy items, markers, and relics for no other reason than to get to the object first!!!

Like I said, it was just TOO much and pushed it too far for me to like this book.

I started this book and was interrupted by some other demands, Had to start over and glad I did, This has so much of what fascinates me, Archeology, religious dogma, history, outrageous possibilities add a mole and terrorism what else could you ask for,