Official Review: The Sacred Icon

[Misael Carlos]

[Following is an official OnlineBookClub.org review of "The Sacred Icon" by Dimitra Papanastasopoulou.]

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1 out of 4 stars

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The Sacred Icon by Dimitra Papanastasopoulou starts in the year 1522. While Grand Master Philippe heads the monk-knights in defending the island of Rhodes from the invading Turks, chaplain monk Emmanuel creates a replica of the Holy Mother of Filerimos. He hides the authentic miracle-maker in the basement of the Palace of the Knights. The safekeeping of the icon seems to set a series of misfortune and heartbreak. As the Rhodians fear for their lives and wonder whether they will live to see the next day, treason surfaces amidst the Order of the Knights. This leads to the Turks occupying the island and the knights leaving in defeat. The story continues four centuries later. The island is under the Italian conquerors. Arch builder Manolis Mentos searches his brother's face among the refugees from Smyrna only to find out from his sister-in-law his horrifying death. How will Niki and her young children find happiness in a place occupied by fierce invaders? Will Yiangos Rozalis make her realize that love is possible amidst the war? The Sacred Icon by Dimitra Papanastasopoulou presents the journey of the Rhodians as brutal conquerors swept them from a difficult time to the next, hoping for the miraculous icon to save their desperate lives.

In the beginning, I was searching for the main characters amidst the numerous people introduced in the book. In the first part, I thought it was going to be Philippe, but then Emmanuel appeared; then another character was introduced and the story was narrated from this new character’s perspective. In the first part of the book, I liked Philippe’s personality the most because of his courage and love for his country. In the second part of the novel, I liked sisters-in-law Evanthia and Niki. Any sister-in-law would be fortunate to have Evanthia: she was compassionate and kind, while Niki was appreciative and grateful. Manolis was an opportunist who will support influential people for his gain. His transformation in the book was unexpected. The members of the resistance seemed to possess the same characteristics, thus no particular character stood out. I would have liked it if a back story was provided for each member to explain their passionate need to resist.

The brutality of the battles was presented in graphic detail. I cringed at the violence and empathized with the people who lost their families. I could not remove from my mind that part where a group of Turks brutally violated a woman. The sadness did not just come from the battles. Deaths, accidents and calamities abounded, and these brought a dark and gloomy atmosphere to the novel.

On the downside, there were numerous grammatical errors from the get-go like missing hyphens, commas, letters and space in between words. There were incorrect uses of prepositions and tenses. Furthermore, misspellings peppered the novel like “mayer” for “mayor,” “luck” for “lack” and “loose” for “lose.” Some proper nouns were uncapitalized. I observed some misspelled names. There was even an error on the date on page 259: it should have been the year 1943, not 1944. Truth to tell, the book practically contained every possible grammatical error there is. Even the footnotes contained some grammatical errors.

Footnotes explained the different unfamiliar terms and phrases the author used in the novel. At first, this facilitated comprehension of Rhodes’ setting and culture. In the end, however, the footnotes did not help me to understand and only succeeded in distracting me in my reading. There were so many names, places and unfamiliar terms that I often found myself confused as I read on. Despite the footnotes, there were many times that I lost track of the story and I have to backtrack to get a hold of the narrative. Also, many parts did not add anything to the plot and only made the book dragging at times. I felt some issues were unresolved.

The Sacred Icon by Dimitra Papanastasopoulou was replete with statements that I found difficult to comprehend because of poor sentence construction. One example was the sentence “She weeps abstracted the dried from the cold tears and goes directly to the kitchen.” Another one was the sentence “The policemen looked each other, pushed each one a child holding it hard from the hand and led them in Kazerma Reggina prison.”

Unfortunately, the ubiquitous poorly constructed sentences prevented what could have been an interesting plot; the narrative became weak due to this glaring flaw. Added to this was the enormity of the grammatical errors. It was very distracting, even frustrating which led me to believe the book did not use a proofreading tool. Thus, I give The Sacred Icon 1 out of 4 stars.

Readers who enjoy reading war stories will like The Sacred Icon. This book is not for young readers because of mature themes like slavery, graphic violence, and rape.

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The Sacred Icon
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