Thunder of Heaven

July 15, 2011

Bad Arabs, steely-jawed Christians, evil Russkies, signs and portents from the Holy Land: LaHaye and Parshall, skilled packagers of prophecy, serve up Pat Robertson's worst nightmare.

LaHaye (Luke's Story, 2009, etc.), of course, has made a worldly fortune serving up visions of the end times with his Left Behind series, which one might have thought would offer the last word on the subject. But no: He left out some important twists on Revelation, namely a Russian-Islamic alliance that "only looked like a historic game changer," a "global religious coalition for climate change" (evil, natch), and some inconvenient volcanic activity to pepper up the air while the forces of evil descend on Israel. Apart from that, it's business as usual: The government is busy putting the mark of the beast on good Americans in the guise of a "biological identification tag," and stalwart servants of Jehovah bearing biblically charged names such as Joshua Jordan (and, in the interest of gender balance, his daughter, who one wishes were named River) do their best to thwart Old Nick—and, for that matter, the Romanians. The story is predictable, the research loose, the errors many: There's no such thing as a lieutenant major, not in this man's army; neither is there a Dali Lama, unless the Tibetan Buddhists have appointed a cleric to oversee surrealist art; and bad old Islamicists would doubtless prefer to be grammatically correct when committing themselves to divine victory, Allah Ackbar. But no matter: This is no exercise in infallibility, but instead a by-the-numbers, fill-in-the-blanks genre thriller with all the usual cliches ("something grabbed her attention like a slap in the face") mixed up with the first stirrings of the apocalypse.

Readers who like that sort of thing will like this. As for the others, well, you don't need to be a fundamentalist to enjoy the end-days mayhem, but it probably helps. Suspending disbelief does, too.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

June 15, 2011

In Edge of Apocalypse, Joshua Jordan was forced to go rogue and use the missile defense system he had created to save America. Now with global events foreshadowing the "end of days" as foretold in the Book of Revelation, Joshua travels to Israel, where he must decide once again whether he should interfere and do what he can to save the world. VERDICT LaHaye's name alone will have libraries purchasing multiple copies, but this fast-paced novel is in its own right a strong one with a multidimensional hero. Ripped right from today's headlines, it will attract fans of the "Left Behind" series and other apocalyptic fiction.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2011
Best-selling biblical prophecy author LaHaye and his coauthor, Parshall, continue The End series, following Edge of Apocalypse (2010), reconnecting readers with the U.S. spy-plane hero turned weapons designer Joshua Jordan. In this futuristic tale, a sophisticated missile-defense system appears to have failed following an attack, killing everyone aboard a commercial flight. Now Jordan and his family begin to see the end times screech toward the culmination of the prophesied apocalypse, the dramatic theme that keeps LaHaye fans coming back for more. Meant to chronicle a fictional but realistic prediction of the very near future, the plot is so familiar that its predictability dials down the potential for a thrilling, paging-turning read, making for a somewhat lackluster read. However, its clear that Jordans story will continue in at least one more episode, and LaHayes followers will be undaunted. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Given the record-breaking success of LaHayes highly publicized previous eschatological novels, this is a must for most popular-fiction collections.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)