4.21.2004
Bethany
I found this picture today and it reminded me of your part of that one story that you posted. :P Tell me if I'm completely out there...
5:15 PM|| 4.20.2004
Review of Soon--warning, spoilers throughout
Ever since The Mark, I think, I’ve started losing respect for Jerry Jenkins. (As far as I’m concerned, Tim LaHaye doesn’t count. I think he does research and maybe Tsion’s sermons—in other words, virtually none of the actual writing.) I think he’s become too aware of his own popularity; he creates characters and kills them just to play with his readers’ emotions, but he’s stopped caring about the poor fools he creates.
Well. I was hoping Soon would be different, and at first I thought it was, but…it seems I was wrong. Basic plot: religion has been outlawed worldwide to keep peace because most of the conflicts in the past have had something to do with—guess what—religion. The main character develops a hatred for all religious people (especially Christians, it seems), and makes it his personal goal to eradicate from America the few that remain. However, he becomes blind in an accident/miracle of sorts, and after pouting about it for a while he turns to God and is healed. Basically. After that, of course, he does a complete about-face and starts trying to help Christians secretly, and…yeah. This guy’s name is Paul, which is indicative of how creative Jerry Jenkins was throughout this. (Another example: you know the story in Acts when Peter was in jail to be executed, and an angel brought him out and he came back to whatever building the other Christians were in, and some girl named Rhoda answered the door and freaked out and…yeah, that story. In this case it’s a guy named Barton who was sent over a cliff in a burning car. The rest—especially the bit with Rhoda—is identical. I about choked when I read it.)
To begin with, I have to say that I liked the basic premise. I’ve written and read things about religion (or Christianity specifically) being outlawed, but I hadn’t thought of doing it for the sake of world peace. The idea, at least, is an interesting one—usually Christianity is outlawed because the current government is atheist, or because the government supports some other religion to the exclusion of all others, or because the government does nasty things and the Christians are the only ones who speak out. I did like Jerry Jenkins’ idea here, and personally I wouldn’t mind using it myself. As for other good points…the dialogue was sometimes good. He’s fairly decent at getting people to talk like they might actually talk. (There are exceptions to this, of course. Paul actually says to his wife, “You went through my things? I can’t tell you how offended I am!”) Paul going blind for a while was nice, even if it was uncreative, because then Mr. Jenkins had to write like I’m trying to write for my Nienor fanfic—Paul knows everything by sound and feel. It didn’t last very long, though, and it was mostly straight dialogue (with even fewer tags or accompanying actions than he normally uses). I’d also thought, before I started the book, that it was a take-off of Left Behind, with the same basic idea but different characters. In reality, it was a totally different take on the end times. Here, it was several years in the future (2036, I think), and a war and all this restriction on religion had taken place between present times and the beginning of the book. The Rapture hadn’t happened yet, though, and none of it had anything to do with Israel. I was somewhat impressed that the same guy managed to think up two different end-times scenarios this way.
Now for the stuff I didn’t like, of which there’s rather a lot. Let’s see…where to begin? I suppose I should start with the plot. As these things go, I guess it was okay, but it didn’t really hang together all that well. A lot of it was obscure or contradictory. Example: in the beginning (maybe a prologue), a Christian named Andy Pass is found driving around, and he’s killed. Okay, that makes sense. The public is told that he was caught in a burning building and died, accidentally. That makes sense too. Paul’s upset, because he knew this guy well; then Paul’s father-in-law, who’s also in the NPO (National Peace Organization, which apparently has a lot to do with disposing of religious people), tells Paul what really happened. The chapter in which this scene takes place ends something like this: “Paul wanted to believe his father-in-law’s story, but he knew better—and it filled him with rage.” Every single time I read that sentence, it confuses me. Paul doesn’t want to believe his father-in-law’s story, to begin with—and if you know that, the rest of it doesn’t make sense. Paul’s mad because he does eventually believe the story (a lot faster than he realistically should have, actually). The next few chapters are spent on just how furious he is at the Christians who are—if you believe Paul—ruining his life. He blames them for Andy’s death, for one thing (never does it enter his mind that just maybe his government and the NPO are wrong in killing these people). When he goes with a group of Marines on a raid to a Christian house, something goes wrong and everyone but Paul dies; the Christians were unarmed, which is obvious to the readers if not to Paul, and he starts feeling rotten about the whole thing. For killing innocent people? Well, no, of course not. He goes and spouts off to his boss about feeling so sorry for the Marines, because they had no idea what they were getting into and they walked into a trap and died. If there was any logic there, I didn’t understand it. The Marines attacked the house at night, with no warning to the Christians at all (basically they stormed the place and started shooting—they didn’t even give the Christians a chance to surrender peacefully), and Paul’s mad at the Christians for causing deaths? I just couldn’t buy it.
At first I felt a bit guilty about this. I wasn’t coming into the book objectively, after all—I didn’t want to like it, so that might have a lot to do with my finding half of what was in it unrealistic. I’ve also realized that I don’t really care for futuristic fiction in general, because the characters usually look back on my era as quaint, and the world has usually turned into something I don’t like, so this would also prejudice me against Soon. But then I realized that it was the author’s job to make it believable, not mine; if he did his job right, I would believe the situations in which the characters find themselves whether I liked the book or not.
As characters go, Paul was just okay. As I said, I couldn’t understand most of his thoughts or motives in the beginning of the book, mostly because they weren’t developed well enough; worse, I couldn’t sympathize with him until he converted to Christianity. To some extent that makes sense—how can I like him when he’s trying to kill Christians?—but if the author’s doing his job right, I should at least be able to understand the character even if I don’t like what he’s doing. Paul was just generally unlikable until he became a Christian, and then he was—naturally—a nice guy. There were other more minor things about the way Mr. Jenkins handled the character, too. For instance, we find out very quickly that Paul is furious with any and all Christians, and that kind of makes sense. Instead of showing us that he’s angry, however, Mr. Jenkins remembers to tell us now and then that his character is really, really ticked, but doesn’t do much to back it up. Paul’s always a jerk, so we don’t notice a difference in his actions (which aren’t described well enough to begin with). In another chapter, Paul goes on an airplane flight while he’s still blind, and apparently he gets a bit phobic about it, or something. The narrative tells us—repeatedly—that he’s terrified…and I just didn’t get it. He’s scared? Of what, exactly? Why? I could never really tell, and worse, besides those references to his terror, I couldn’t see it. I think he gripped his armrests tightly once or twice and sweated. That’s okay for a start, but when there’s almost nothing else within a very long scene to show that he’s scared, you just can’t feel it. (I’ve read very good irrational terror, too. I have much more sympathy for people with real phobias after reading Arena and the Firebird books.)
The other characters don’t get off much better than Paul does. I figured out after reading several Left Behind books that most minor characters exist solely to hang around for a few pages and die. Run into a sympathetic minor character in Soon (read: good guy) and most likely he—or she—will be dead within the next chapter. That oddness contributes to an overall tone of hopelessness for Left Behind, despite its subject matter, and I got the same thing from Soon. Everyone’s dying off, the people who hate Christians are winning every battle, the so-called miracles aren’t doing anyone any good, and God seems pretty darn remote and uncaring—if there’s no hope for these characters I’m supposed to care about, what can I get out of it? I like books that help me see that darkness and evil won’t win in the end. Of all the books out there, Christian end-times fiction ought to do that, and this book…didn’t. Actually, I’m getting the suspicion that Mr. Jenkins just likes playing with his readers’ emotions; that’s why he creates and destroys characters so fast, often for the most pointless reasons.
Speaking of pointlessness, you didn’t think this book could get by without a romance, did you? No, it couldn’t, and yes, it’s pointless. See, Paul has a bad relationship with his wife, because he’s a jerk and she’s an annoying weepy woman. (Well, she is. I felt sorry for her because of the way Paul treated her, but I sure didn’t like her as a character.) At Andy Pass’s funeral, Paul meets Andy’s daughter, Angel, and immediately falls in love, or something. They interact throughout the book; there’s mutual attraction, she’s a Christian, everything’s wonderful. Except for one little problem: Paul’s still married, and she doesn’t know this. Paul and Angela have a little adventure together in which he saves her life and they bust a bad guy, and then he says, oops, forgot to tell you—I’m married. She’s upset and we never hear about her again. Now how dumb is that? Mr. Jenkins throws these two together in such a way that we more or less want them to stay together, because they’d be happy—but it can’t happen, so why’d he start the romance in the first place? (Another minor pet peeve that relates to Angela—every sympathetic Jerry Jenkins character whose father is alive during or shortly before the book calls her father “Daddy.” Sure, I do that with mine, but in print—especially since it seems that all of them do it—it just looks stupid.)
Obviously, I didn’t like this book very much. It was all right, but plot was underdeveloped, the writing style was unimpressive, and the characters were boring or confusing. Read it if you like, but don’t expect anything wonderful.
Well. I was hoping Soon would be different, and at first I thought it was, but…it seems I was wrong. Basic plot: religion has been outlawed worldwide to keep peace because most of the conflicts in the past have had something to do with—guess what—religion. The main character develops a hatred for all religious people (especially Christians, it seems), and makes it his personal goal to eradicate from America the few that remain. However, he becomes blind in an accident/miracle of sorts, and after pouting about it for a while he turns to God and is healed. Basically. After that, of course, he does a complete about-face and starts trying to help Christians secretly, and…yeah. This guy’s name is Paul, which is indicative of how creative Jerry Jenkins was throughout this. (Another example: you know the story in Acts when Peter was in jail to be executed, and an angel brought him out and he came back to whatever building the other Christians were in, and some girl named Rhoda answered the door and freaked out and…yeah, that story. In this case it’s a guy named Barton who was sent over a cliff in a burning car. The rest—especially the bit with Rhoda—is identical. I about choked when I read it.)
To begin with, I have to say that I liked the basic premise. I’ve written and read things about religion (or Christianity specifically) being outlawed, but I hadn’t thought of doing it for the sake of world peace. The idea, at least, is an interesting one—usually Christianity is outlawed because the current government is atheist, or because the government supports some other religion to the exclusion of all others, or because the government does nasty things and the Christians are the only ones who speak out. I did like Jerry Jenkins’ idea here, and personally I wouldn’t mind using it myself. As for other good points…the dialogue was sometimes good. He’s fairly decent at getting people to talk like they might actually talk. (There are exceptions to this, of course. Paul actually says to his wife, “You went through my things? I can’t tell you how offended I am!”) Paul going blind for a while was nice, even if it was uncreative, because then Mr. Jenkins had to write like I’m trying to write for my Nienor fanfic—Paul knows everything by sound and feel. It didn’t last very long, though, and it was mostly straight dialogue (with even fewer tags or accompanying actions than he normally uses). I’d also thought, before I started the book, that it was a take-off of Left Behind, with the same basic idea but different characters. In reality, it was a totally different take on the end times. Here, it was several years in the future (2036, I think), and a war and all this restriction on religion had taken place between present times and the beginning of the book. The Rapture hadn’t happened yet, though, and none of it had anything to do with Israel. I was somewhat impressed that the same guy managed to think up two different end-times scenarios this way.
Now for the stuff I didn’t like, of which there’s rather a lot. Let’s see…where to begin? I suppose I should start with the plot. As these things go, I guess it was okay, but it didn’t really hang together all that well. A lot of it was obscure or contradictory. Example: in the beginning (maybe a prologue), a Christian named Andy Pass is found driving around, and he’s killed. Okay, that makes sense. The public is told that he was caught in a burning building and died, accidentally. That makes sense too. Paul’s upset, because he knew this guy well; then Paul’s father-in-law, who’s also in the NPO (National Peace Organization, which apparently has a lot to do with disposing of religious people), tells Paul what really happened. The chapter in which this scene takes place ends something like this: “Paul wanted to believe his father-in-law’s story, but he knew better—and it filled him with rage.” Every single time I read that sentence, it confuses me. Paul doesn’t want to believe his father-in-law’s story, to begin with—and if you know that, the rest of it doesn’t make sense. Paul’s mad because he does eventually believe the story (a lot faster than he realistically should have, actually). The next few chapters are spent on just how furious he is at the Christians who are—if you believe Paul—ruining his life. He blames them for Andy’s death, for one thing (never does it enter his mind that just maybe his government and the NPO are wrong in killing these people). When he goes with a group of Marines on a raid to a Christian house, something goes wrong and everyone but Paul dies; the Christians were unarmed, which is obvious to the readers if not to Paul, and he starts feeling rotten about the whole thing. For killing innocent people? Well, no, of course not. He goes and spouts off to his boss about feeling so sorry for the Marines, because they had no idea what they were getting into and they walked into a trap and died. If there was any logic there, I didn’t understand it. The Marines attacked the house at night, with no warning to the Christians at all (basically they stormed the place and started shooting—they didn’t even give the Christians a chance to surrender peacefully), and Paul’s mad at the Christians for causing deaths? I just couldn’t buy it.
At first I felt a bit guilty about this. I wasn’t coming into the book objectively, after all—I didn’t want to like it, so that might have a lot to do with my finding half of what was in it unrealistic. I’ve also realized that I don’t really care for futuristic fiction in general, because the characters usually look back on my era as quaint, and the world has usually turned into something I don’t like, so this would also prejudice me against Soon. But then I realized that it was the author’s job to make it believable, not mine; if he did his job right, I would believe the situations in which the characters find themselves whether I liked the book or not.
As characters go, Paul was just okay. As I said, I couldn’t understand most of his thoughts or motives in the beginning of the book, mostly because they weren’t developed well enough; worse, I couldn’t sympathize with him until he converted to Christianity. To some extent that makes sense—how can I like him when he’s trying to kill Christians?—but if the author’s doing his job right, I should at least be able to understand the character even if I don’t like what he’s doing. Paul was just generally unlikable until he became a Christian, and then he was—naturally—a nice guy. There were other more minor things about the way Mr. Jenkins handled the character, too. For instance, we find out very quickly that Paul is furious with any and all Christians, and that kind of makes sense. Instead of showing us that he’s angry, however, Mr. Jenkins remembers to tell us now and then that his character is really, really ticked, but doesn’t do much to back it up. Paul’s always a jerk, so we don’t notice a difference in his actions (which aren’t described well enough to begin with). In another chapter, Paul goes on an airplane flight while he’s still blind, and apparently he gets a bit phobic about it, or something. The narrative tells us—repeatedly—that he’s terrified…and I just didn’t get it. He’s scared? Of what, exactly? Why? I could never really tell, and worse, besides those references to his terror, I couldn’t see it. I think he gripped his armrests tightly once or twice and sweated. That’s okay for a start, but when there’s almost nothing else within a very long scene to show that he’s scared, you just can’t feel it. (I’ve read very good irrational terror, too. I have much more sympathy for people with real phobias after reading Arena and the Firebird books.)
The other characters don’t get off much better than Paul does. I figured out after reading several Left Behind books that most minor characters exist solely to hang around for a few pages and die. Run into a sympathetic minor character in Soon (read: good guy) and most likely he—or she—will be dead within the next chapter. That oddness contributes to an overall tone of hopelessness for Left Behind, despite its subject matter, and I got the same thing from Soon. Everyone’s dying off, the people who hate Christians are winning every battle, the so-called miracles aren’t doing anyone any good, and God seems pretty darn remote and uncaring—if there’s no hope for these characters I’m supposed to care about, what can I get out of it? I like books that help me see that darkness and evil won’t win in the end. Of all the books out there, Christian end-times fiction ought to do that, and this book…didn’t. Actually, I’m getting the suspicion that Mr. Jenkins just likes playing with his readers’ emotions; that’s why he creates and destroys characters so fast, often for the most pointless reasons.
Speaking of pointlessness, you didn’t think this book could get by without a romance, did you? No, it couldn’t, and yes, it’s pointless. See, Paul has a bad relationship with his wife, because he’s a jerk and she’s an annoying weepy woman. (Well, she is. I felt sorry for her because of the way Paul treated her, but I sure didn’t like her as a character.) At Andy Pass’s funeral, Paul meets Andy’s daughter, Angel, and immediately falls in love, or something. They interact throughout the book; there’s mutual attraction, she’s a Christian, everything’s wonderful. Except for one little problem: Paul’s still married, and she doesn’t know this. Paul and Angela have a little adventure together in which he saves her life and they bust a bad guy, and then he says, oops, forgot to tell you—I’m married. She’s upset and we never hear about her again. Now how dumb is that? Mr. Jenkins throws these two together in such a way that we more or less want them to stay together, because they’d be happy—but it can’t happen, so why’d he start the romance in the first place? (Another minor pet peeve that relates to Angela—every sympathetic Jerry Jenkins character whose father is alive during or shortly before the book calls her father “Daddy.” Sure, I do that with mine, but in print—especially since it seems that all of them do it—it just looks stupid.)
Obviously, I didn’t like this book very much. It was all right, but plot was underdeveloped, the writing style was unimpressive, and the characters were boring or confusing. Read it if you like, but don’t expect anything wonderful.
