Blasphemy by Douglas Preston

Blasphemy by Douglas Preston follows a group of elite scientists attempting to recreate the conditions present at the theoretical beginning of the universe, the Big Bang. Led by Dr. Hazelius, the self-proclaimed smartest person in the world, the group has built an enormous supercollider in the northern Arizona desert where they hope to discover all the mysteries of creation. To a certain high profile televangelist, this sounds exactly like blasphemy and he is determined to put a stop to it. The additional viewers and donations are just a bonus, right? When things get out of hand, there is no controlling the situation until it all ends with its own big bang.

This was a book club selection and it is highly unlikely that I would have picked this book up on my own. The scientific aspect of the story sounded like it could be interesting, but the writing was just kind of terrible. The author was obviously attempting to write a tough guy novel where the main character is the only one who understands everything, but he seemed so two-dimensional to me. The other characters in the book were even worse. Honestly, in a couple of cases, I couldn't tell if the characters were meant to be racist, or if that was just the author coming through the writing.

I was committed to reading this book all the way through for book club, but that was all that got me through the first half or so. Once I got past that point, I genuinely couldn't put it down because it had finally picked up enough speed to keep me interested. I stayed up too late finishing it, and was glad to be done, but I can't say I enjoyed it. I don't know that there was necessarily anything wrong with this book, other than I don't enjoy this writing style and the couple of racist comments that may have been meant as character flaws, but it wasn't my kind of book.