1 out of 4 stars
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The Protectors, The First Coming by Jonathan Gregory Reed is a modern fantasy thriller novel. The main character is Robert St Thomas. St Thomas was born with the ability to tap into the collective conscious of humanity. He approaches the White House to team up with the President. After stopping a terrorist attack using the information provided by St Thomas, the President agrees to form a special team in order to address what St Thomas views as the world’s biggest problems including corruption within the government and drug cartels. Along the way St Thomas meets Julie Wang and the two spark a romance. St Thomas is a man on a mission with all of humanity’s knowledge to aid him.
I read this book because I love Star Trek’s The Borg and the idea of collective conscious is such an interesting one. While the origin of St Thomas’ powers aren’t explained, it appears to be the result of a mutation as there are others out there like him. I have major issues with the collective conscious presented in the book though. Often, despite the book stating otherwise, the power is used to predict the unpredictable like exactly when people will be in certain places. My other main issue is that he uses the knowledge to “know everything” but the book doesn’t explain how he knows or decides who is wrong. There are plenty of thoughts people ‘know’ and majority of people agree are correct but are wrong. There’s also no range to these powers or anything. It’s poorly explained, overpowered, and misused.
The issue of the superpower could be excused if the book managed to have excellent writing and was interesting but this book sadly fails at both.There are many grammar and spelling mistakes to the point of distraction. The biggest example is that the author makes each sentence of dialogue its own paragraph and closes the quote even though the person continues to speak. This was extremely confusing, especially given that sometimes people say 3 sentences that all mean the same thing. Another issue with the dialogue that contributes to confusion is that everyone is written with the same voice so no one has any personality. Other mistakes include spelling issues like “Adopt Hitler” (gave me a chuckle), using “title wave” instead of ‘tidal wave’, and the sentence “the gentleman had no chosen but to recognize the present of St. Thomas”. These are but a few of the numerous errors in the book and it’s so hard to read because of it.
As for the plot of the book, I kept waiting for the moment St Thomas would fail or be mistaken but that moment never comes. The book is boring throughout and I only kept reading because I was hoping something interesting would happen. Everything is so easy and goes off without a hitch. He knows about a terrorist attack, he stops it. He knows where a terrorist leader is, the leader is taken out. Even the romance lacks any sort of real conflict. It doesn’t help that the situation is wholly unbelievable. The President won’t believe someone just because they show up and know some names and phone numbers. Even if he did, that person is in no way going to be allowed on military missions. I just couldn’t buy into this book despite wanting to because I love the premise.
This book is more aimed at the type of person who enjoys films like London Has Fallen than someone who likes sci-fi or general modern fantasy type stories. It reads like it wants to be an action movie sort of book. It has a strong religious overtone that I personally found overbearing because it heavily implies that someone who doesn’t have religion, like myself, cannot possess morals. This might not bother some but I think it needs to be stated. In light of the mistakes, the unbelievable situations, and the general lack of excitement to keep someone reading, I rate this book 1 out of 4 stars. I could not really recommend this book to anyone because it was too hard to read and didn’t feature any payoff for doing so.
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The Protectors, The First Coming
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