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Thank you, all. As some of you have pointed out, it needs to be structured differently, which would require a rewrite. Also, as CJ pointed out in his review, the dialogue in question doesn't really add much. The quick fix is to rip it out. Nevertheless, it was surprising/interesting to write myself into a corner. Haven't done that in a while. :-)

Thanks again.
Dirk

Thank you, Linda. Not to beat this to death, but the characters who are telling this shared tale (using double quotes) also relate dialogue that was spoken within the tale. That requires nesting quotes, which is what you see in my initial post in this thread. Maybe I'm just missing something...

Thanks
Dirk

I'm not sure how that would work. The characters in the story weave in and out of the tale, talking to each other, moving around, etc. Also, there is more than one narrator; other characters jump in and tell parts of the historic events.

Episode 9 was a decent wrap-up for the saga given the fact that they didn't follow a story arc for the last three films. It's asinine that they would do that with a multibillion dollar franchise. The best part about 9 is that Emperor Palpatine was back (as a clone). That was an asspull. The worst part was when Lando takes off to round up enough ships to take on the Emperor's massive new fleet. He comes back in no time at all with hundreds of ships, easily ten times the size of the fleet that attacked at Endor. People in the audience burst out laughing it was so bad. At least they retconned all the s--t that went wrong in episode 8. Not to be outdone, my story retcons the original trilogy. :-)

It sometimes take me two to three weeks to reciprocate all incoming reviews. I'm too addle minded to track that much information for any length of time. I want to make sure everyone who is supposed to gets a recip.

I doubt Claire is a regular thriller reader, but I could be wrong. She's also not Catholic, but knows Catholicism from her younger days. She's definitely provided some good Catholic feedback.

As for the age range, it's probably not too different than non-Christians, roughly fourteen and up, provided I keep the violence under control. I have one advantage and disadvantage compared to Dan Brown. The advantage is that there is no fictional telling of the End Times from a Catholic perspective, except a book written over one hundred years ago. Many younger Catholics read the Left Behind series and think it's Catholic, which it definitely isn't. Interestingly, Pope Francis recommended the century-old book. It's called Lord of the World. The similarity to my series title is a coincidence, but it will help me on Amazon and other sites given the matching algorithms they use.

The "disadvantage" I have compared to Dan Brown is my book is much more religious than his, with more everyday Catholic elements, including a lot of praying. I had Connor pray silently for the dying cardinal, but I plan to go back and verbalize that, as that is more likely in a setting of so many religious characters in the room. They would want to join in. Those are probably a turnoff to secular readers, but I prefer it that way. One element to the story that will annoy serious Catholics is that I have a gay priest running an orphanage of boys, and the most senior cardinal in the Vatican allows it to continue. I have other elements that some Catholics won't like, such as God the Father accepting a new challenge from Satan that is winner-take-all. Also, the idea that Jesus will return as a boy. Those are not supported by Revelation, even though I found wiggle room in Acts 1 for the latter.

I didn't look for reviews before deciding on a largely Catholic story, but, now that you mention it, I'll look up reviews for Lord of the World. It's very different from my book, but avoids almost all violence and suffering. Basically, it skipped most of what's in Revelation. Fortunately, as I found in my research of Revelation study guides, Catholicism leaves it very open to interpretation, so I have a lot of room to maneuver.

EDIT: The reviews for Lord of the World were all over the place. Some loved it. Others thought it was awful.

Although I'm more than happy to have Rambo fans read the story, I'm definitely not worried about attracting them. If I was, I wouldn't be worried about the violence, and I would strip the prayers.

I'm a little concerned that too much violence is creeping back into my story in chapters 14 and 15. I considered adding holy water squirt guns to the Nerf-style rifles mentioned in chapter 12, but that's too silly. A better approach is bullets loaded with holy water. The holy water releases as the bullet disintegrates. That also eliminates the need for the toy rifles. Just use holy water ammo. That way, instead of having prolonged shoutouts with demons, they only need to be shot a "few" times with holy bullets, and the holy water causes them to disintegrate as happened to the chief exorcist that Connor splashed with holy water in chapter 11. No muss, no fuss, no dry cleaning. Tension can be maintained by focusing on what the demons do after they're separated from their bodies (e.g., the spooks try to possess the living, who wear crosses and say prayers to protect themselves).

Naturally, there is still other violence in the story that can't go away, such as the crucifixions and
the stabbing of Connor with the demonic dagger. My goal is to dial down the violence. Also, after the first few demons dissolve in chapters four and six, I won't mention the 'mass of tissue and bodily fluids' anymore. I'll just say they dissolved.

Found a fix re the blind cardinal not being healed. He declines healing, saying that his blindness is a blessing from God that has given him a greater ability to commune with the Holy Spirit. Some shit like that. I'll call that a Hail Mary. :-)

I'm getting close to the end of Chapterhouse and read a few reviews of Sandworms of Dune on Goodreads. Reviewers really trashed that book. My favorite review began with What the hell was that? The reviews included enough details to remind me of the final two books. I think I own one of them on Kindle, but I seriously doubt I'll read either.