Winter Book Thingy, 2021 •• Some Blog Site

Winter Book Thingy, 2021

Feb

2021

I used to wonder how my wife could read essentially the same book over and over again. I mean, the books did have different titles and different authors, but if you summarized the plot in one or two sentences it could probably apply to all of them.

Then I started reading Joel C. Rosenberg books. They were interesting, I liked them, I kept reading, and then I realized how my wife could keep reading variations of the same book. And I don’t mean that in a bad way.

Here’s my summary of the books. Note that each series is meant to be read in order. And the title of this blog post is winter 2021, but I’ve been reading these since July 2020. It’s just in winter 2021 I finished all of them.

I started with the original series – The Last Jihad, alternatively known as the Bennett and McCoy series. This seems to be his earliest work, as the writing is slightly clunkier than his later series. But it was engaging, and educational in some spots. You will certainly come away with a better understanding of some of Ezekiel’s prophecies after the 3rd book.

What I also liked about this series was that it showed how the end times and the anti-Christ could happen from a geopolitical perspective. My exposure to end times stuff has been from the spiritual and theological angle. Not that these books discount or ignore that – indeed there is much scripture referenced in the later books – but the focus is different.

My comparison is that this series starts out like Tom Clancy and ends up more Tim Lahaye and Jerry Jenkins.

Also, the series ends pretty conclusively, but not completely so. There could be another book after the 5th one, but it understandable why he ended it there.

I then read the next series available at our library: The Third Target, alternatively known as the J.B. Collins series. This series was different because it was Rosenberg’s foray into first-person perspective. It didn’t take much getting used to, but he didn’t go back to it for his other books so I think he didn’t care for it.

This series came to a definite conclusion – no chance for another book. Well, I suppose there always could be, but it would be a stretch for this one. This was a little darker than the other series, probably the same amount of violence but a little more depravity to contrast the bad people from the good people.

Next up: The Kremlin Conspiracy, alternatively known as the Marcus Ryker series. This one was back to third person perspective like the original series, but centered around Russia rather than Israel and not much in the way of end-times prophecies. Mostly just military action. The third book ended well enough, but there were a couple of question left unresolved. Then a couple weeks after I finished the series (and was halfway through the next), I saw that Mr. Rosenberg had a fourth book coming out for this series.

Finally: The Twelfth Imam, alternatively known as the David Shirazi series. This was more in the spirit of the original series, but focused on Iran and surrounding countries. And not the standard end times settings, but a possibility of what could happen. This series ended fairly well; I’m not expecting any surprise fourth book for this one.

Basically, if you like any of JCR’s fiction books you’ll like them all. But you can’t just pick a book at random and read it, you need to read them as a series. You can pick a series at random and read it – there’s no overlap or crosstalk at all between series.

And you may be wondering why I’m reviewing only this one guy’s books in this blog post. No ulterior motives – his books are the only books I’ve been reading for the last few months. But now that I’ve read all the fiction series he has, I’m adrift in looking for what to read next. Browsing through the library, I happened upon a Jules Verne book I hadn’t read yet, so I’m in the middle of that. I’ll try to include that in my next reading update.

So I will prove Myself great, show Myself holy, and make Myself known in the sight of many nations; and they will know that I am the Lord.

Ezekiel 38:23