Rating: 
Summary: The Heavy Artillery's Out
Review: If you thought HEAVEN'S WAGER was hot, wait until you read the second book in THE MARTYR'S SONG trilogy. The opening scene, where an unspeakable crime is committed in an idyllic village during WWII, is worth the price of admission. Mr. Dekker has even weighter themes in mind here: The cost of love, what sacrifice really means, how addictions snare us, and what it means to be truly free. This is powerful, powerful stuff. Nothing really offensive here (my 16-year-old daughter read it and got a lot out of it), but it is, after all, a modern-day Hosea and Gomer story. If you've already caught on to Dekker, you know the score. If you're new to him, this is a great place to start.
Rating:
Summary: Fiction with substance
Review: If you're looking for a light read, try another book. This one goes deep. If you have jaded spiritual sensibilities, the power of this story might not hit so hard but if you're at all sensitive to the cost of true love, When Heaven Weeps will bowl you over. Enough said. Incredible novel but not for everyone. Unfortuneatly.
Rating:
Summary: a great awakening
Review: If you've been raised in the church, ask yourself right now how many times in your life you've heard the phrase "God loves you."
Now stop and think about it. What does that mean, anyway? What does it look like? And what on earth does it have to do with reality?
In When Heaven Weeps, Ted Dekker hypothesized what might happen if God put a fragment - "just a whisper" of His love into one human being, and directed it at one other human being. These two people are Jan Jovic and a drug-addict named Helen. The story that ensues is an ourtrageously absurd tale that people seem either to love or to hate.
People have questioned the actions of Jan, particularly toward Karen, his fiancee at the beginning of the novel. After meeting Helen, Jan leaves Karen. I would like to take this opportunity to point out that no allegory is perfect, that Jan is not perfect, and that When Heaven Weeps is fiction. This is a 'what-if' story - as stated previously, what if God put some of His own love into a human soul? Jan is just as fallen as you and I are, and this story, being written by yet another fallen man, cannot perfectly embody the full scope of God's love.
Every book must be interpreted in the light of the purpose for which it is written. The purpose of When Heaven Weeps was to take that oft-repeated phrase, 'God loves you,' and fill it with a hint of the passion that God really feels for us.
Another theme runs through this book, parallel to the first. It is the Christian's call to suffering, to death, and Dekker makes that painfully obvious from page one. The opening statement of the book, before Chapter One even starts, is as follows:
"Christians who refuse
to look squarely into the suffering of Christ
are not Christians at all.
They are a breed of pretenders
who would turn their backs on the Cross,
and shame His death.
You cannot hold up the Cross,
nor drink of the Cup,
without embracing the death.
And you cannot understand love,
unless you first die."
His words echo those of Dietrich Bonhoeffer: "When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die" - the literal translation of that phrase is actually "Every call of Christ travels into death." If you are going to follow Christ, your road will invariably lead to the Cross. We are called to die for Jesus - maybe figuratively. Maybe literally.
In When Heaven Weeps, Dekker presents us with a challenge - to respond to the outrageous love of God by loving Him in return - not with empty words and hollow sentimentality, but with action, with self-sacrifice, with death if that's what it comes to. That is the only way that we can find life.
Rating:
Summary: Impact
Review: Impact is the one word I will use to describe this book. The message in this book is a basic but too frequently forgotten one. It is one that Christianity is based on, yet we seem to set it aside in favor of tradition and theological disputes. That message is LOVE. Do we really understand the way Christ loves us? Do we understand the degree of His love? I don't think so. I know I don't: I think even a glimpse of it would kill me. That is why I was so impacted by this book. It made me really sit back and look at my relationships - my marriage, my kids, my friends. How can I change the way I love people around me. Do I take quick offense, or do I choose to move the way Christ moves? I know I would prefer to do the latter. READ THIS BOOK! If you need a good challenge to go with an excellent read as I do - this book will do it for you. It can be life-changing if you let it be.
Rating: 
Summary: Somewhat flawed but theologically thought-provoking.
Review: In a small village in Serbia, a Christian community is brutalized by a group of soldiers, the women threatened with death and forced to carry heavy stone crosses from the nearby cemetery. "You're simply going to carry a cross for your Christ." Under the orders of his brutal commander Karadzic, Janjic Jovic participates in the crazy game, which results in the death of a young girl and a priest, Father Micheal. Jan can't understand how these Christians accept "the death of martyrs, choosing death instead of renouncing Christ, and their outpouring of love for Christ leads Jan to swear to follow their Christ.
Later in America, Jan writes a best-selling book which recounts his life-story, "The Dance of the Dead". Engaged to marry his beautiful agent and publicist Karen, and on the verge of a multi-million dollar movie deal, everything is set for a happy ending. Until Jan meets Helen, a promiscuous drug addict who begs him for help. Helen is a familiar character from Book 1, but now we learn her true story: "My dad was an idiot and my mom was a vegetable and I became a junkie." When Jan finds himself falling in love with Helen, he must deal with the anger of the Christian community, as well as with Glenn Lutz, Helen's powerful lover and drug supplier.
Helen "was addicted...from the soul up," and even after her marriage to Jan she keeps returning to Glenn. How will Jan respond? The main message of "The Dance of the Dead" is that "God loves man passionately, that one moment with God is worth death". Although he's witnessed the love of a priest and a young girl for Christ, has Jan himself really learned what this love is? Ivena, his "adoptive" mother from Serbia thinks not: You have not "learned the nature of God's love yet," "God knows you have more to learn of love." In the events that follow, Jan's love for Helen mirrors God's love for sinners.
Strengths:
1. Plot: The story-line isn't quite as fast as the first book in the series, but the action is certainly as intense, particularly in the first and the last part of the book (although the climax is not entirely convincing). The story of persecution in Serbia is horrifying, but gripping, intense, and stirring.
2. Theology: Unlike many other Christian novelists, Dekker's theology is not incidental to the story-line, but underlies the entire plot, and is the framework that shapes and holds the story. The peril of this approach is that flawed theology will ruin the entire book, but conversely accurate theology results in an even more powerful and solid story than most. The theological thrust of the novel revolves around two main points:
a) God's love for sinners.
i. Jan comes to realize that his love for Helen has been worked in him by God, and reflects Christ's love for the church. Here Dekker clearly draws on the imagery from the book of Hosea and the Song of Songs, as Jan says: "You have made me Solomon, desperate for the maiden; you have made me Hosea, loving with your heart."
ii. Under the influence of her addictions, Helen is pulled back to her former life with Glenn, who even says to her: "To you I'm Satan." Helen's longing to go back to Glenn, "wallowing back to that pig," is "no different than what most men do with Christ." Sin is an addiction and a form of slavery, and Christians are guilty of going back to it time and again, just like Helen.
iii. Although Helen is adulterous, yet Jan continues to love her. His "love for an adulterous woman" is "no different than God's love for an adulterous nation. For Israel. No different than his deep love for the church. His bride. You."
b) The need for sinners to respond to God's love by dying to themselves.
i. A repeated thematic note is that "Death must be embraced if you wish to follow Christ." Sometimes this requires physical death as a martyr.
ii. But more important than physical suffering is the need to put to death sinful desires. This is what Helen, too, must learn. "Even after being on the receiving end of Jan's love she still did not know how to return that love for the simple reason that she wasn't yet willing to die to her own longings. Love is found in death ... It's only when you decide to give up yourself - to die - that you yourself will understand love."
Some problematic areas and questions:
a) One of the most serious problems is "Book 2 - The Sinner", when Jan abandons his engagement to Karen and instead falls in love with and marries the junkie Helen. Dekker wants us to see Jan's love for Helen as an image of God's love for sinners, but this image fails in several ways:
i. Jan is being unfaithful to his promise of marriage to Karen, follows his feelings of passion and lust. Karen is correct when she says: "Oh come on, Jan. Don't cast this off on God. You know how pathetic that sounds? You dumped me for another woman because God told you to?" I agreed. Rather than sympathize with Jan, I sympathized with Karen and was quite angry with Jan at this point.
ii. Although Helen appears to be a Christian later, when Jan first falls for her and proposes marriage to her, she is still an unbeliever. Dekker presents Jan's love for Helen as worked by God, yet the Bible is very clear that a believer should not be unequally yoked with an unbeliever (2 Cor 6:14-17).
iii. Helen wins Jan's love by her charm and beauty and is presented as a victim of her circumstances, a woman that we cannot help but feel sorry for. Sinners aren't loveable victims but ugly rebels who reject God's commandments and don't deserve mercy!
Rather than suggesting that Jan's actions mirror God's love, I would suggest that Jan's treatment of Karen mirrors our treatment of God by our unfaithfulness! Jan who is the sinner by being unfaithful to his promised engagement to Karen in following his feelings of lust for a junkie. Jan's actions in Part 2 of the book (before this marriage) seriously weaken the theological framework, and the story only makes most sense *after* Jan's marriage.
b) Dekker glorifies physical suffering for Christ, and confuses it with the need to crucify our old nature. In the first part of the novel, the statement that "The greatest part of love is found in death" is applied to physical death and suffering. Dekker is more correct towards the end of the novel when he shows that carrying our cross primarily requires putting to death our sinful desires, which is even more difficult. "Is the death of the will any less painful than the death of the body ... in reality the death of the will is far more traumatic than the death of the body."
Is "While Heaven Weeps" worth reading? Despite some serious theological flaws, it's still worth reading. It's a gripping read, and Dekker is a good writer who knows how to keep us turning the pages. This novel does have something very powerful to say about God's love for sinners, and about the need for sinners to die to their old nature. It's just too bad that Dekker missed an opportunity to state this message more clearly than he did. But thumbs up to Dekker for trying to write a novel that is far deeper than most Christian writers today. -GODLY GADFLY
Rating: 
Summary: Guess I don't quite get all the fuss either...
Review: Oh, sure, it's mostly a well-written book. It's a gripping story that keeps you reading. But a story of Christ's love? The main plot revolves around two men who are both obsessed with possessing the same woman, a beautifully captivating drug addict. Frankly, I saw little difference between the supposed "love" shown by either of these characters for Helen. Yes, one was evil and abused Helen and used drugs to keep her coming back to him. The other man, Jan, was just as obsessive and selfish---but not as evil---in his desire to possess Helen as his own. The supposed "love" Jan had for Helen, at least the way it was described in the book, was little more than extreme lust. Within days of meeting Helen and feeling all weak in the knees (the descriptions of the physical effects of his lust, thankfully, stopped short of the lurid) Jan quickly dumps his fiancee of only two weeks, has Helen move in with him, and throws all common sense to the wind. Then he quickly manipulates Helen into a frantically short engagement and speedy marriage, taking advantage of her addiction to drugs, her desperation to flee her abusive boyfriend (even as she continually returns to him), and her confused state. The worst part of the book is that we are supposed to believe that God is somehow behind Jan's bizarre obsession and that this overwhelming passion is somehow a mirror of God's love for us. Frankly, I don't think God is so selfish. Even when Jan gives up his fancy American life to flee the country, it's quite clear that he's saving his own skin and also taking his "prize" with him. The final showdown, as Jan fights his rival for Helen, was supposed to be, I think, some grand act of self-sacrifice on Jan's part, but it really did not come off that way. Well written, an exciting story, but hardly the glorious parable it claims to be.
Rating:
Summary: It Had Me Weeping
Review: OK, I enjoy a good tear-jerker every once in a while, but boy oh boy, I wasn't ready for this one!! It's definitely a ten-hanky book--that's the maximum score I'm aware of. When Jan . . . well, I don't want to give away the story, but some INCREDIBLE things happen near the end of the book. And at the start of the book. And in the middle of the book, for that matter. This may be the most incredible story of redemptive love in the history of literature. Don't, I repeat, DON'T miss out on it!
Rating:
Summary: My Mind's Blown
Review: OK, I gushed over Heaven's Wager--and rightly so. I'm not backing down one inch. But if Heaven's Wager was brilliant, When Heaven Weeps is a supernova, the single brightest star in the sky. This story just explodes off the page. Dekker must've been on some kind of weird spiritual high to write this thing. What a volatile mix: a (ah hum) "lady of the night," a Really Bad Guy who's her lover, a whacked-out war hero--what an unlikely trio of characters, especially in a "Christian" novel. Yet almost in biblical fashion, almost like those gripping stories of God-forsaken Hebrews struggling to find their way that pepper the Old Testament, this story is larger than life. I don't want to give anything away; I'd rather have you encounter it firsthand with little or no idea of what's going on from a plot perspective. That's always the best way. But listen, Dekker--and how he did it, I have no idea--majorly trumps Heaven's Wager. Sometimes an artist stumbles with his sophmore effort. Not here. All the promise so lavishly on display in Heaven's Wager bursts into full flower here. I can't wait to read whatever he's gonna do next.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing
Review: Once again, Dekker continues to amaze. This is the beginning of Helen's story. He throws you on the edge of your seat and does not give you any time to catch your breath! Ted Dekker writes in such a way where the reader is actually able to visualize what is going on. That's talent! I would advise that the reader should not read this book only for the entertainment, because it is so much more. God loves us so much, and this is an awesome, thought provoking illustration of that love. This book is sometimes like a quick punch to the chest, and then at times it's a cool drink of water. It has that kind of action and then at times that kind of romance that perfects this book. I can understand why this is such a controversial book, but that's another reason that it makes it so good. Ted doesn't get any better than this! Any questions? Just ask Jan Jovic in When Heaven Weeps. Enjoy it, and prepare to be amazed.
Rating:
Summary: Philosophy, Theology, Ethics--but above all LOVE!
Review: They say there is eros love (physical and erotic), philio love (brotherly and comradre), and agape love (godly and perfect). This is a tale of all levels of love and how they tangle with money, power, and even holy purposes. Dekker's sequel outdoes the original (Heaven's Wager) in its depth, passion and suspense. Occasionally the reader is able to guess at what comes next. Even then, however, the telling of it is compelling! The author's ending is a bit rushed, much like his first in this Martyrs series. However, this time it works well enough, and I come to the end amazed, inspired, and challenged. Upon finishing this work, Christians will not only ask, "Have I lost my first love?" but also, "Have I really ever embraced the fullness of it?" Great stuff!
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