|
| 
| Manufacturer: Tyndale House Publishers
Category: EBooks
List Price: $12.99
Buy New: $9.99
You Save: $3.00 (23%)
Avg. Customer Rating:  164 reviews
Sales Rank: 420
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
ASIN: B0014KJC4K
Publication Date: March 18, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
|
| Customer Reviews:
 ~Exceptional~ July 4, 2008
An incredible series that culminates with another wonderful and extremely plausible story. In fact, the authority Mr. Rosenberg uses as he weaves together the past, present, and possible future tensions in the Middle East and abroad is noteworthy. Drawing on the Ultimate History Book, the Bible, he shows beyond a shadow of a doubt the absolute authority its Author has. I look forward to reading anything else written by Mr. Rosenberg.
 Very disappointed July 2, 2008
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
Maybe I heard wrong. Or maybe there's been a huge error. All I know is that if I had bought Joel C. Rosenberg's new political thriller, Dead Heat, I'd be one unhappy camper.
I first heard of Dead Heat when I was flipping the TV remote one night. I saw Glenn Beck holding a copy so I had to stop. I would have sworn the talk centered around a heated political election that was the premise of this work. It sounded interesting and I immediately check out Dead Heat at my library. Even the back-cover synopsis states about the book that "the battle to succeed (the president) is heating up into the most fiercely contested presidential election in American history."
And that's as far as the similarities go. The text enclosed between the covers of my copy of Dead Heat has nothing to do with a heated presidential election. My copy opens with President James MacPherson getting ready to deliver his out-going address to the Republican National Convention. Then four U.S. cities-Washington D.C., New York City, Los Angeles, and Seattle, are annihilated by nuclear bombs. Most of the U.S. government is dead, including President MacPherson-and what is left is in chaos. The rest of the story revolves around the re-formation of the government and trying to determine if China or North Korea should receive the retaliatory nukes.
Interspersed with End Times prophecies and the conversion of the non-believers to accept Jesus as their personal savior, the novel is written in a 24 (the television show) format that has little substance. Ninety percent of the characters listed on the character page are dead within the first twenty pages. The characters that do exist are superficial and lack depth. While the storytelling was good, the novel was just one series of events after another.
And there is one thing that really added to my irksome mood. Nowhere on the jacket, inside or out, does Rosenberg or the publisher, Tyndale House, state that this is a fifth book in a series. The only clue I had was that other novels are mentioned in the text. I won't go back and read the previous four novels. But if Rosenberg ever writes the novel that was promised in the back-cover synopsis, I might consider reading it.
Armchair Interviews says: Heed this reviewer's comments.
 Dead Heat June 30, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This was a gift for someone else so I can't rate it myself but I'm sure she will enjoy this book a lot-she has heard very good things about it.
Danelle Reetz
 Nauseating and Misleading June 26, 2008
4 out of 9 found this review helpful
Having never read a Joel Rosenberg novel before, I picked this Audio Book off of the Cracker Barrel BOA rack because of the title and description on the back cover. They make this book sound like a battle for the race to the White House similar to the one we are experiencing in the United States right now. As a political junkie, I could not wait to begin listening to this novel, despite the quote by Rush Limbaugh on the front cover. However, after an exciting attack on the GOP national convention, this book took a turn for the nauseatingly religious. I haven't been this bible-thumped and brow-beaten since Sunday School, and I was not expecting it. If you are looking for a political thriller, this is not it. This is not even thinly-disguised religious jargon. It is repulsive, offensive propaganda.
A terrible finish to a truly great series! June 25, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
What was one of the best series out there turned into a flop of a final book to this series.
While I am not against the Christian message, to turn one of the very best dead-on series of todays world into a book I would have expected to be written by Billy Graham himself, was a huge disappointment.
I found myself turn page-after-page-after-page without doing anything but glancing to see if the religious hodgepodge had stopped.
The way this ended ranked up there with one of the worst ends to a book I think I have ever read. Rosenberg pretty much removed the main characters from the middle 90% of this book, and then in the last few pages brought the book around to some of the best and well developed characters out there, and in a matter of pages terminated their life and any future of this series.
Rosenberg's other books in this series are worthy of the comment on them by Rush Limbuagh as one of the best books you can and should read. This one, however, was a huge disappointment to the nature of this style of a book series. Rosenberg had a good thing going here, and either he fulfilled his contract with this series, or just decided to kill one of the best series - either way, it was/is a shame.
Perhaps Rosenberg simply wants to go back to writing Childrens books... and if this last book is any indication to how he deals with his characters, perhaps going back to Childrens books are a good thing.
Mr. Rosenberg... may I suggest something you to... perhaps at some point in the future you can go back and rewrite 80% of this book. Even if you do have the main characters die off as you have, please, give us something other then what you gave us with this book. I understand your desire to use your fame as an author to get a message out to your readers... but even as a religious person, I found this to be way beyond what I would have expected from you. All your other books deserve to be up there in the likes of Clancy and Flynn, but this one does not. It deserves a place besides Joel Osteen, Kirk Cameron, and Joyce Meyer (not saying these are bad authors, but rather this book series does not belong on the same shelf as these Christian ministers, with the excepting of this final book)
All in all, I walked away from this book feeling like I had been let down by the author. I had waited months for this book to come out. I ordered it the day it was released - and had it shipped overnight. Two days later the book was finished and I felt depressed because of the lack of quality of driving force that this book had compared to the others in this series. I had all my friends reading this series, and when they asked me how this latest book was, I pretty much had to tell them to not even buy it. Better to have Jon and Erin still alive and not have a series completed, then to deal with the flop of this book. Sorry Mr. Rosenberg, you just really failed to keep your series at the top of the charts with this one. I really truly wish I could say something good about this book... but not a single thing in it is worth a positive comment - beyond if you are after a religious book with heavy eschatological slants and a simple "poof, they're gone" of two of the best characters we've had written about over the last few years by any author.
|
|
|
Powered by Associate-O-Matic
| |
