Book Review - Kingdom Come - The Final Victory by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins
Category Book Review
So we come to the end (I *really* hope!) of the Left Behind series with Kingdom Come: The Final Victory by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. This series was done four books ago, but it was being kept alive with artificial life support. That's too bad, as it's tarnished what was a good concept...
In this final book, the action shifts to the millennial kingdom after the end of the Tribulation. The plot, such as it is, revolves around man's rebellion during that time, leading up to the final showdown between Christ and Lucifer. There's a basic espionage/infiltration story with some romantic bylines, but it's something that could have been done in 100 pages or less. The vast portion of the book involves retelling of Old Testament stories and quotations of prophecy related to end times.
On the positive side, this is one of the few treatments I've read of what life during the 1000 year period after the Tribulation could be like. LaHaye and Jenkins interpreted some Old Testament passages in ways I had never considered. Not that I think they were right or wrong... it's just an angle I had never heard. Christians who read this will have some room for their imaginations as to what that life will be like. Having said that, this book is bad from a literary standpoint. The plot is thin, to say the least. The stories and Scripture don't add much of anything to the story-line other than from a theological viewpoint. There was a small sliver of hope that the espionage plot was going to turn into something, but it was getting very late in the book (and my fears were that they were going for yet another volume). In the last few pages, they just jumped ahead a few hundred years, wrapped everything up in about 10 pages, and that was it! You could almost hear the editor saying "you're late" or "you're over your page count".
At least with the prequels (which I also thought were ill-advised and full of filler), I felt there was a bit of background that made them marginally entertaining if you had read the entire series. There's nearly nothing here from a literary perspective that I'd recommend. Yes, I believe the underlying message. But LaHaye and Jenkins went to the well far too many times in this series. This series *should* be done, as there's nowhere else to go with it. But if they figure out some way to stretch out another title out of it, they'll do it without me.
So we come to the end (I *really* hope!) of the Left Behind series with Kingdom Come: The Final Victory by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. This series was done four books ago, but it was being kept alive with artificial life support. That's too bad, as it's tarnished what was a good concept...
In this final book, the action shifts to the millennial kingdom after the end of the Tribulation. The plot, such as it is, revolves around man's rebellion during that time, leading up to the final showdown between Christ and Lucifer. There's a basic espionage/infiltration story with some romantic bylines, but it's something that could have been done in 100 pages or less. The vast portion of the book involves retelling of Old Testament stories and quotations of prophecy related to end times.
On the positive side, this is one of the few treatments I've read of what life during the 1000 year period after the Tribulation could be like. LaHaye and Jenkins interpreted some Old Testament passages in ways I had never considered. Not that I think they were right or wrong... it's just an angle I had never heard. Christians who read this will have some room for their imaginations as to what that life will be like. Having said that, this book is bad from a literary standpoint. The plot is thin, to say the least. The stories and Scripture don't add much of anything to the story-line other than from a theological viewpoint. There was a small sliver of hope that the espionage plot was going to turn into something, but it was getting very late in the book (and my fears were that they were going for yet another volume). In the last few pages, they just jumped ahead a few hundred years, wrapped everything up in about 10 pages, and that was it! You could almost hear the editor saying "you're late" or "you're over your page count".
At least with the prequels (which I also thought were ill-advised and full of filler), I felt there was a bit of background that made them marginally entertaining if you had read the entire series. There's nearly nothing here from a literary perspective that I'd recommend. Yes, I believe the underlying message. But LaHaye and Jenkins went to the well far too many times in this series. This series *should* be done, as there's nowhere else to go with it. But if they figure out some way to stretch out another title out of it, they'll do it without me.
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