Rating: 
Summary: 3 stars with a caveat
Review: This book gives the impression that it was written by someone who loves history, loves the subject, but unfortunately is not a gifted writer. This makes the book rather difficult to review. On the one hand, I found the history aspect fascinating. I did not really know much about the siege at Rhodes and was continually amazed at the different things I learned, from medieval warfare and tactics to culture and customs. This aspect of the book is very well done and highly enjoyable. However, this is not a history book, but historical fiction, and it is in the fiction aspect that the author truly fumbles. Characters are shallow and underdeveloped. Conversations are unnatural. The relationships between characters are contrived. Everything that makes this a work of fiction is very poorly handled.Read this for the history aspect. You will learn much and the author is very good in that regard. Force yourself through the fiction and just keep telling yourself that the man is doing his best. Next time I hope he just writes a nonfiction historical account.
Rating: 
Summary: An Excellent Book.
Review: This book is one of the best I have read in a long time. I have always had trouble finishing books and I can always tell a book is good when I can't put it down. This book achieved just that.
Rating:
Summary: The Shadow of God
Review: What a great book! Goodman's historical novel deals with the siege of Rhodes in 1520 by the forces of the Ottoman Turks, led by Suleiman the Magnificent, who was known as "The Shadow of God" to his subjects. I've seldom read anything in this line that is so exciting, and at the same time so well balanced - not only between the Turks and the Christians, but between the inner and outer lives of its characters. The book immediately places the reader in the middle of the action, from the deafening roar of exploding cannonballs in a besieged city, to the eerie silence of the Sultan's inner court. At the same time - and this is quite remarkable - the reader gains a genuine insight into what it must have felt like to be there and to do and to suffer such things. This clear-eyed and compassionate book represents, to me, the best in historical fiction, an ideal work of imagination in the service of history. It is so accurate and vivid that it could (and should!) be assigned as supplementary reading in college courses. I've been to Rhodes, walked the battlements, and read the history, but for me it is "The Shadow Of God" that made this magnificent past explode into life. At the end of the book, there is a hint that a sequel might be forthcoming; if so, I will be the first in line to read it!
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