Dreadful - Rated 
I will never forgive myself for paying good money for this waste of paper. The story, such as it was, was tedious and laboured. The irritatingly overdone Geordie accent was deeply flawed. But worst of all, the characters were completely and utterly unconvincing.
Since I couldn't possibly inflict it on some unsuspecting victim by putting it in a charity bag, this will be the first book I have ever thrown in the bin.
Epic - Rated 
This is a huge and ambitious book for a first novel, with over 500 pages, multiple story strands, several themes and lots of jumping backwards and forwards in time.
The main story is about John Gore, a young vicar, setting off to start up a new church in a deprived area of Newcastle, or as he refers to it "planting a church". This in itself is intriguing as an idea, but along the way he meets some people whose own stories get tangled up with his - a nightclub bouncer, a young single mother, and a New Labour MP.
All three provide help in setting up the church, but in all three cases there is a price to pay.
The main story takes detours to delve into the back stories of the MP, the bouncer and the single mother and also into the personal history of John Gore who is not only a Christian but a committed socialist and Labour party member. There are some hints at the internal politics and rivalry within the Anglican church as well as within the Labour movement - significant as it is set in that time just before the 1997 elections. In fact Tony Blair makes a cameo appearance as he addresses a constituency meeting.
At first it can be a bit confusing and hard going to work out what is going on, but soon it all falls into place and as various connections between characters become apparent the book becomes genuinely exciting with several twists and turns on the way to a slightly disappointing ending.
1996 is only 12 years ago but this book, although accurately set in that time, feels like it is a lot longer ago. Its an achievement to write a period novel set in such a recent historical period but the author manages to hold it all together so well that I can only wonder how he is going to follow this remarkable debut novel.
Disappointing - Rated 
I came to this book with great hope following a review in The Sunday Times. Sadly, my hopes were dashed. The writing is sometimes clumsy; the book deals with issues that for most of us are issues no longer; it is difficult to suspend disbelief for the duration; none of the characters engages our attention; and some -- perhaps most -- of them are, frankly, unbelievable. Overall, I ended this book (and I had to force myself to reach the end) with the thought: "So what?" And I'm a Geordie. If you don't have even that incentive to read it, leave it alone.
Overdone - Rated
I was very daunted by the thickness of this novel for a start, as my usual reading material is quick paced and easy to get into. I found this hard to even get off the starting block.
I feel that it was overcooked and sometimes characters were not needed, as in the plot wouldn't have changed much if they had been omitted. Character description is overdone and disjointed, which leads to the novel being the same.
I don't doubt that Kelly has good imagination and can write a good novel, but this is not it. He needs to try and just get to the point without all the meandering around, or it just becomes labourious reading.
March of the Synonyms - Rated
I wish Richard T. Kelly had never seen a thesaurus. I wish he had never discovered the synonym function on his word processor. His novel would have been much, much, much better if he had been blissfully unaware of it. I wish he had made a dictionary his constant companion. Because the truth is that Crusaders is a badly written novel. It's not that the characters are unbelievable (although they are), or that the plot is overblown (although it is), it's that the writing is just *wrong* - the syntax is convuluted and ugly, and the words that Kelly chooses are mis-used or mis-placed.
This doesn't just happen once or twice; it is endemic throughout the whole novel. As Adam Mars-Jones has said before me: If you're going to use words like 'enjoin' or 'hence', it's best to know what they mean. At one point a character is described as a "sweet, somewhat strained, somewhat distraining person" - but 'distraining' has to do with the seizure of property and nothing to do with personality. It is difficult to know what Kelly is thinking. Oftentimes I don't even want to know.
My verdict: life is too short, don't bother.
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