Black

Rating:
Summary: Black is the best!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Review: I have read all of Ted Dekker"s books and Black is the best yet! While, I like the Left Behind series this book is better. Iam hooked and cant wait until Red comes out! A very fast read, plan to stay up all night!!!

Rating:
Summary: simply the best
Review: this book is awesome, just buy it. Ted Dekker is the best writer on the planet. look at the reviews for all his other books. every single one is 5 star. don't be put off by him being a christian writer; his stories are ingenious. his plots compelling, his narrative unmatched. buy any one of his books (it doesn't matter which) read twenty pages, and you will end up buying them all.

Rating:
Summary: WOW! One Down, Two to Go.
Review: This was really awesome. I'm not going to try to put it in a box. Let's just say that it is what it is. Ted Dekker is a genius! Join Thomas Hunter and his quest to save the world while trying to stop an evil that is unimaginable. Without giving anything at all away, this is a fantasy book, yet without witches and elves, etc. But on the other hand, look at it as an end times project. I can't wait for Red! Ted Dekker has outdone himself once again. And this is just the beginning!!

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Summary: A Thrill Ride Through Two Worlds
Review: The Raison Strain will kill the entire world, but only Thomas Hunter knows about it and only through his mysterious "dreams" can he awake a sleeping world. Only Ted Dekker could merge the worlds of terrorism, government power, and the netherworld and do it in a gripping way.

Dekker has created a novel far outside the box of traditional Christian literature and yet still delivers a fantastic and suspenseful thrill ride. His stark worlds between darkness and light evoke images of ancient classics like the Chronicles of Narnia and Lord of the Rings.

And yet, Dekker has provided a thoroughly realistic and modern hero in Thomas Hunter, an everyday guy just as mystified by what is happening to him as the reader is. I am typically skeptical of anything resembling science fiction or fantasy-It usually does not pique my interest and yet Dekker had me gripping the pages of my hardcover and wanting more.

The incursion into the "other world" is deep enough just to get a glimpse, but not too far to bore you with tales of fantasy and lore. And the Scriptural metaphors aren't too easy to grasp, but peek through, engaging fully the reader's mind.

You'll learn to love Hunter, hate the evil men who wish to bring destruction upon the earth, but more importantly, you'll experience a close encounter with the spiritual battle between good and evil.

By going outside the usual bounds of fiction, Dekker has created a stimulating masterpiece. I can't wait for the next two books in the trilogy.

Rating:
Summary: An exciting thought provoking novel
Review: Multi-billionaire Valborg Svensson craves becoming the most powerful person on earth. To accomplish his objective, he finds a serum that will kill its human host in three weeks if left without a vaccine. Valborg plans to release this weapon of mass destruction on an unsuspecting world. Any nation that fails to capitulate to his demands will die for the vaccine will be limited to those who bow down to Valborg.

Wannabe writer Thomas Hunter learns about Valborg's terrorist plot to gain global supremacy. He tries to take control of the vaccine, but Valborg's agents attack him. As he flees a bullet grazes his head knocking him out. When he awakens, Thomas remembers in deep detail his fleeing from Valberg's thugs, but he is in some alternate realm running for his life from demonic creatures while looking for his beloved Rachelle. That night he goes to sleep only to awaken to a realm in which Valborg wants him dead and Rachelle is part of his dreams. He questions his sanity as each time he goes to sleep in one world, he wakes up in the other.

BLACK starts off as a medical thriller, but quickly spins into an exhilarating science fiction tale that spans two worlds reminiscent of Piers Anthony's THE APPRENTICE ADEPT trilogy, but with more of a psychological hook. The story line is action packed on both worlds as Thomas struggles with what he perceives is reality vs. a dream fantasy. He is the hero who makes the duality work as his enemies on both globes seem snidely cartoon characters. Fans will appreciate this exciting thought provoking novel that shows how precarious reality is when worlds collide.

Harriet Klausner

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Summary: A New Era for fiction
Review: The first thought on your mind when you read my heading is that I'm overstating the case, as so many reviews tend to do. But this new novel by Ted Dekker honestly does signal a new era in fiction. Never have I read a novel so riviting and so meaningful, which spanned so many ideas and crossed so many genres as Black.

And it worked. Right down to the last page it absolutely worked.

Thomas Hunter is a struggling novelist who is thrown into a dream world that he mistakes for the real world. Unless of course, his dream world IS the real world and the one he assumed was real is really the dream world. Using this device, Black takes the reader on a roller coaster ride in parallel realities in which Hunter is faced with the potential destruction of both worlds due to his own unwitting choices. The twists and turns work into a beautiful symphony of meaning which climaxes with a cliff hanger.

The story is complex and engaging. This is my second Dekker novel, the first being "Three." I don't ordinarily post reviews, but this one demands it. Fantastic book! Very different from Three, but ultimately far more satisfying.

Thank God the next installment, RED, is due out May rather than the typical year wait.

Rating:
Summary: A fantastic, strange, and totally compelling allegory
Review: What an incredible story. Ted Dekker has yet again delivered with a story that simply won't let you go. The book starts out a bit slow, and is often hard to follow as we are taken along with the lead character, Thomas Hunter, between modern day Denver and a strange world that at first appears to be a dream.
Slowly the two worlds become more entwined and harder to determine what is real and what is a dream.

The pacing and structure of the story reminds me of some of Terry Brooks books, namely the "Magic Kingdom: For Sale" series. Consider this trilogy a tribute to the late, great, CS Lewis as it is a wonderful allegory of the Christian story, but with a nod to modern day authors like Brook's or even Stephen King. Like the CS Lewis classic Narnia series, time does not correlate between the two worlds, allowing for the storylines to intersect in some really fascinating ways.

One warning, do not buy this book unless you are prepared to buy all three. So tantalizing is this cliffhanger that I had to run out that day and purchase the second book, and start that one. Now I have to wait for the third.

A well done and well written book. If you are not a fan of science-fiction or thrillers then this book may not appeal to you, but if you are it is an impossible to put down page turner.

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Summary: Amazing work - I was blown away!
Review: I won't go into much detail about the plot, because so many reviewers have already done such a wonderful job at that. I will tell you what a wonderful book I thought this was. I read the description in the bookstore and had a feeling I would hate this book. A deadly virus threatening to wipe the planet of all life? Please. Read that a million times before. A man living in parallel universes? Uh-huh, riiight. I left the book alone for almost a month, I did finally pick it up again, and I'm so glad I did.

Ted Dekker has such a unique style of writing, and a very creative imagination. His writing reminded me a lot of Frank Peretti, only with a little more sarcasm and humor in it. The plot twists were better than I expected, and the "cliche" ideas I thought I would find turned out to be not so... cliche!

I don't think I could really find all the right words to tell you how great I thought this book was. All I can say is I really loved it, and if you like suspense, mysteries, thrillers, and romance... you will definitely enjoy this book. All I had to do was read the first 4 lines of the first chapter and I was hooked. I guarantee you will be as well!

Rating:
Summary: exceptional!
Review: Yay, Ted Dekker! Two thumbs up! I first read Black during Christmas and I couldn't put it down! What a great book. It starts out a bit confusing, but then you're just drawn into the story. You have to know what is going to happen next. Once again Ted Dekker has done a superb job! Read it!

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Summary: Go read C.S. Lewis's Perelandra . . .
Review: There are two kinds of authors in my mind:

(1) those whose sandals I am unfit to unlace, and

(2) those who do such a bad job of it that they make me think I could actually write for a living. Unfortunately, Ted Dekker with Black falls into the latter category.

I saw the second volume of this trilogy, Red, laying around my work, and I picked it up to see an endorsement from Frank Peretti, the best author working in Christian fiction today in my opinion. So I was thrilled when I found it in the library the other day. I was expecting something really slick, well-written, that had a great moral theme.

Well, at least the theme part was on target.

I did really enjoy a lot of the book's themes. I thought the Great Romance, for example, was a good way to describe our relationship with God. However, great themes and good morals won't gloss over really sloppy writing.

I thought a lot of the dialogue was stilted and unrealistic. It didn't matter which world, which race, or what gender the different characters were, they all sounded and acted virtually the same way. They were all pretty rude and NONE of them were dynamic characters. They were as stale as thrice doused cardboard.

I especially found Thomas Hunter to be a really weak main character. At the beginning of the book, he's a pretty unsavory character, involved with the Mob and smuggling contraband animal skins. As the book progresses, he kidnaps a person, lies to anyone and everyone, and does anything to meet his goal. Even after his "conversion experience," for a lack of a better term, he is a rude, conniving character. Not exactly a hero I could really cheer for. Every tyime he did something, I couldn't help but shake my head.

I thought the description in the book was really pretty poor. A great deal of the "real world" plot happens in Southeast Asia, and aside from mentioning that there are jungles and rice paddies, not much information is given. In the "other world," there's a huge forest of vibrant, glowing trees. All of the people have green eyes, and that's just about all you need to know about them.

A lot of the "other world" plot is a rehashing of the first few chapters of Genesis, and C.S. Lewis did a much better job with his seminal Christian science fiction classic, Perelandra.

The list of things wrong with could keep on going. Unfortunately, Dekker is pretty typical of the "Christian" fiction scene, Which is a real shame.

Hopefully something much better will come along soon.