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Lunch » Tags » Books » Reviews » Thunder of Heaven: A Joshua Jordan Novel (End Series, The)

Thunder of Heaven: A Joshua Jordan Novel (End Series, The)

1 rating: 4.0

A book by Tim LaHaye

"Tim LaHaye's books always entertain, educate and thrill but THUNDER OF HEAVEN takes it to a new level. I never thought the End of Days would cost me so much sleep!" ---#1 NYT bestselling author Glenn Beck "Dr. Tim LaHaye writes … see full wiki

Tags: Books

Author: Tim LaHaye

Publisher: Zondervan

1 review about Thunder of Heaven: A Joshua Jordan Novel...

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A Little To Much Evangelism For My Taste

Aug 15, 2011

by MeliWillis
posted in Cafe Libri: Reviewing Books & More

Rating:

For the Jordan family life never truly slowed down. Even though Joshua had helped to prevent a terrorist attack, he and his RTS (Return To Sender) antimissile defense system were still considered controversial. Despite the divisive nature of the RTS system, it was allowed to be installed on commercial airlines. When an attack did come, the system failed and a biased media was quick to blame Joshua for its failure. Though unsure as to why the RTS did not work properly, Joshua soon discovered that this terrorist act paled in comparison to an attack that was being planned by a group with ties to North Korea, Iran, and Russia. With the American government unwilling to investigate this new threat, Joshua and his covert organization, The Roundtable, are forced to tread in the gray areas of the law in an effort to save the lives of million.

When I pick up a book by Tim LaHaye, I anticipate certain elements to be prevalent. Most of the time, I'm alright with the heavy spiritual themes and realize that's simply how he writes. However, this time it seemed as though the evangelical message combined with the end-time events overwhelmed the fiction with the last half of the book feeling more like a lesson in prophecy and the gospel than a novel.

I loved the early part of this book. It had a great opening with fast developing plots. The conspiracies were launched and the switching between locations and perspectives worked beautifully. I read the first 100+ pages in a day and was totally captured by the story. Soon after that though, things seemed to balloon with the plots so beautiful developed rapidly fading into the background. Additionally, the story lines I found intriguing came to early conclusions leaving me with a new group of plots that unfortunately felt too familiar and predictable.

The first book in this series, Edge of Apocalypse, posed a great question about ownership of intellectual property. It was that storyline that really kept me interested in that book. However, with Thunder of Heaven, the question that I wanted to explore was presented late and unfortunately not developed or resolved to my satisfaction. Hopefully the next book will more full explore the scenario of the average citizen's legally allowed response to prevent terrorist attacks in the event that the government is doing nothing.

I'm really not a fan of strong evangelical messages in fiction. I know many people disagree with me on this issue. I've been a Christian for much longer than I haven't. I really don't want to read the plan of salvation multiple times in a book. Maybe that's selfish because I assume the messages are there for those that are not Christian, but I wonder how many non-Christians read heavy evangelical Christian fiction. Regardless, this is my major complaint with the second half of Thunder Of Heaven. I began to think that some scenes were there for the sole purpose of allowing yet another presentation of the gospel or a reiteration of Biblical prophecy concerning the end-time events.

This book has a great start and I believe it would have been stronger throughout, had it contained fewer, better developed plots. Instead, with the explosion of weak plots combined with the overabundance of evangelism and theology in the second half, I was glad when I reach the last page. However, I do realize my complaints with this book are truly personal preferences. So, for readers that enjoy end-times novels and are alright with a healthy amount of evangelistic teaching, Thunder Of Heaven is probably what you're looking for.

Review title provided courtesy of Zondervan.

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