The Good Man Jesus and The Scoundrel Christ - Philip Pullman

I would really like to say I enjoyed The Good Man Jesus and The Scoundrel Christ. I would like to say it – but honestly I can't.

I've read Philip Pullman books before and have found them to be good reads - well written and with interesting idea So when I saw this book I was firstly intrigued by the title and secondly by the fact that it was written by Pullman.

The title is interesting and from reading the back of the book I was hooked. The idea of the familiar stories from the bible being changed so that Jesus was born a twin and that it is the story of two brothers rather than one man.

Sadly though the book didn't live up to it's blurb. I found the writing to be very off putting. It wasn't the usual strong style I associated with Philip Pullman. I'm not sure whether this book was churned out quickly and therefore Pullman didn't have enough time to work on it to get it up to standard or whether it was actually supposed to be written that way. When I was reading the book the first thing that came to mind about the writing style was that it was almost written in the way I would explain bible stories to a young child.

Normally I don't mind short chapters. But some of the 'chapters' in this book it was barely worth classing them as chapters. One example is the chapter “The Death of John” which is literally a single page and is barely even a full page at that. Some chapters are longer such as the ones where Jesus has long speeches.

I was disappointed with this book. It held so much promise and it just didn't delivery.