The God Project: A Novel Paperback – 1 May 1983

This was written in the 80’s and you can tell. Misogynistic references are rife throughout. A female character not understanding something that a man is explaining to her, women needing to be sedated as they become hysterical after hearing bad news, women imploring men to “look after” them. The storyline is obvious and not believable, I know it’s fiction but the author should make the suspension of disbelief easy. I found myself skim reading the pages just to get to the end of the book.

thoroughly enjoyed this. The story is a little bit different,very readable, and a good plot. For me this was one of the authors best works. Dont think this would ever happen, but then who knows the way science is going nowadays.!

Another book that keeps you guessing until the very last moment. It's scary how this could turn out to be true one day

Good reading,

Sound concepts based on a universal fear of being spied upon by a coldly unsympathetic establishment. Somewhere along the line it loses its way but, even so, it is a good read

Will read more of john Saul

'The God Project' was originally published in 1983, that's when I first read it, and the story revolves around a series of infant deaths from SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome), before turning around and focusing upon two families and two children, Randy and Jason, who are far from ordinary.(The subject of SIDS is a sensitive one and I think it's fair to advise people it forms part of the story).Jason's family have suffered one of the mysterious deaths, baby girl, while Randy suddenly disappears. Are the two events linked?. Well; here the mystery begins. There are themes of kidnap, abduction and strange 'schools for gifted children'.What follows is a search for the truth with much of the book taken up by themes of medical science and computing. The parents of missing and dead children begin a search, against the advice of just about everyone else, to look into just exactly what happened to their loved ones. A background of conspiracy begins to emerge and it's a conspiracy in the shape of a dreadful entity 'CHILD'.There are quite a few twists and turns with subplots coming at the reader from different directions which adds to the intrigue but; time has moved on and 'The God Project' hasn't moved with it. This is such an easy novel to figure out and the science/technical aspects are difficult to believe in, I doubt they were based on scientific research to begin with, but they're now clumsy and hard to take seriously.I'm always left wondering why John Saul's books are in the horror section?. 'The God Project' isn't a horror and most of his books aren't. This is a mix of thriller/mystery/conspiracy with some horror elements but it's not a horror and you'll be disappointed if that's what you're expecting.John Saul wrote to formula, his own, and most of his novels follow a similar pattern. This one is no different. I remember how popular 'The God Project' was in the 1980s but now it's distinctly average and not a bit scary. Who can I recommend it to?. Perhaps people, like me, who were fans of the author at the time and want to revisit or anyone who enjoys a gentle, though old fashioned genetic based mystery.

Even though this is not horror in the true sense of the word, The God Project holds the distinction of being the first book of its kind that I ever read. If you asked me how and why I became a horror fan, I would point to this novel and credit it with introducing me to the genre I have come to love above all others. Rereading The God Project now, the story still retains a lot of the qualities that gave birth to my fascination with dark fiction all those years ago. This was Saul's sixth published novel, and its medical science fiction theme seems original and well-developed here; later Saul novels built upon a similar plot structure have always seemed rather derivative and thus less compelling in comparison. The medical science Saul builds into this story seems rather impressive and believable, especially given that not too many writers were playing with DNA and genetic manipulation back in 1982. The medical science Saul describes may be utter baloney, but he makes it sound realistic and possible, and that is what makes this book succeed as well as it does.The basic story is not too complicated. Sally Montgomery refuses to believe that her perfectly healthy little girl's death is due to SIDS. Determined to find out what really killed her baby, she braves the disbelief and worry of her husband and mother to dig into what might have happened. Meanwhile, Lucy Corliss' son Randy disappears, secretly kidnapped and placed in an Academy for boys supposedly like himself. As a number of distraught parents of children either missing or dead come together, hints of a terrible conspiracy begin to emerge. All of the children had been secretly studied by a mysterious entity called CHILD, and Sally uses her computer knowledge to dig up some troubling data from the kids' medical files. Suspicion turns on the doctor who delivered all of the children in question, and the action and suspense builds steadily throughout the novel. The reader gets a good idea about what is going on well before the main characters figure everything out, but Saul makes sure the ending is not anticlimactic. There are several twists at the end, one of them masterfully disguised and thus unexpected.I believe this is one of John Saul's very best novels, but my inability to know the answer to a few questions in my mind keeps me from giving it a perfect rating. There was one element to the story that seemed important and quite fishy, but the story never went down the road I was looking for in that regard. Maybe that is my own fault as a reader, but there were clues which led me to believe an important subplot would come into play. The epilogue, while compelling, is a little rushed, and that is another tiny flaw that I take into account in designating my personal rating. Still, Saul caught be quite off-guard with one gotcha event toward the end, which really impressed me. Just like the children involved in the God Project, this novel is almost perfect. Anyone wanting to read Saul for the first time would do well to select this novel as his/her means of introduction.