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Ted Dekker, in a short period
of time has become my
favorite author.
There are many great writers in the world today, along
with many great books and novels that quickly jump to
the top of the best seller lists around the world.
Books like The DaVinci Code, The Historian and even
The Purpose Driven Life are purchased by customer
after customer in bookstores around the world, simply
because that's what everybody is reading. While all
this has been going on, there has been one writer who
has, until recently, been flying under the radar. His
name is Ted Dekker, and he is simply the best fiction
writer writing books today.
Since March of 2000, Dekker has written or co-written
sixteen books. All but three of his books have been
novels, the others include one novella (The Martyr's
Song), one short Christmas story (The Promise), and a
book on the loss of passion in the Christian Church
(The Slumber of Christianity). This is a truly
impressive resume. I have personally read six of his
books, am part way through a seventh, and dying to
read the eighth. I am going to attempt to critique
the books I've read without giving away too much story
detail, as hard as that is.
In September of 2003, Dekker released the novel, Three.
This complex psychological novel tells the story of a
young seminary student named Kevin Parsons. As Kevin
drives home from classes one afternoon, he receives a
phone call. A mysterious voice tells Kevin that he
must confess his sin in three minutes or he will die.
This all happens within the first few pages! It all
runs at full speed from there as Dekker takes the
reader on a suspense coaster for the next 400 pages. A
number of characters join Kevin in his fight to stay
alive throughout Three. The question you will ask
yourself all the way until the end is whether somebody
is really trying to kill Kevin. 20th Century Fox is
currently in post production on the film version of
Three coming in the fall of 2006.
In 2004, Ted released a very ambitious project known
as The Circle Trilogy. And when it hit, it received
comparisons to The Lord of the Rings and The
Chronicles of Narnia, not because of similar themes,
but because of the epic scale in which the three
novels are written and played out.
The first novel, Black (Feb. 2004), tells the story of
Thomas Hunter, a mild-mannered man with money trouble.
When he narrowly escapes a hit on his life, he is
clipped by a bullet and knocked unconscious. When he
awakes, he is lying in a strange forest of dark evil.
Thus begins this epic story. As the story progresses,
Thomas discovers that when he falls asleep, or goes
unconscious, in one world, he awakes in the other.
Whenever Thomas sleeps in the "real" world, he awakes
in the alternate world which Dekker writes as a
Biblical allegory of the fall of man. This Biblical
allegory is present in each novel. By the end of
Black, Thomas and the reader realize that his fate is
key to the fates of both worlds. In the real world,
it's a fight against terrorists planning on world
domination; in the alternate world, it's against giant
black bats (yes, I said bats!).
In Red (May 2004), Thomas continues to learn more
about these dual realities. As the plot against the
world progresses, Thomas fights against the clock to
rescue a scientist who
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holds the key to a virus that
has been released into the atmosphere that is slowly
killing all life on earth. But how can this
mild-mannered man fight terrorists? It's all due the
fact that in the alternate world, Thomas has become a
great warrior in the cause of Elyon (God). Red
continues the frantic pace of Black as Dekker
continues to weave his epic tale towards a dramatic
conclusion.
Finally, in White (Sept. 2004) Dekker finishes his
trilogy with a bang. Both worlds are spinning towards
ultimate destruction and Thomas must keep them both
from burning. But will his efforts cost him his life
in one world or both? Dekker continues to pull in his
readers who will have an extremely difficult time
putting down the final novel in the Circle Trilogy.
The best part of reading them now would be that all
are available in stores and you don't have to wait to
read the next one like some of us had to do. Dekker
completed an amazing feet by releasing all three
novels in the same year; something that is unheard of.
Yet he pulls it off with such ease that you walk away
believing this man is a genius.
For Dekker's next novel, Obsessed (Feb. 2005), he
keeps up the parallel story theme but with a much
different twist. A Jewish real-estate investor has
nothing but money on his mind. That is until he gets
caught up in a plot to find what could be hidden
treasure or a hidden curse. When he finds out that an
old Jewish woman has passed away, he looks into her
past to find out what her treasure could have been;
but he's not the only one looking for it. The
parallel story here is the flashbacks to 1940's Europe
and a Nazi prison camp where this old woman was a
captive. What his her treasure and why does the son
of the Nazi prison warden want with it?
In July of 2005, Dekker released a nonfiction
book titled The Slumber of Christianity. Part
biographical, part attempted alarm clock to the
Christian Church, Dekker writes of how he believes
that Christians have lost the passion for Heaven.
Dekker writes that to enjoy our time on Earth and to
be satisfied with our lives, we must have a passion
for Heaven: we must know that what awaits us is far
greater than we have here. Dekker believes that if we
wake up and take hold of what God has waiting for us
in Heaven, we can enjoy the pleasures of life that
much more. The Slumber of Christianity is a poignant
read for Christians who may have fallen asleep in
their faith.
Ted Dekker, in a short period of time has become my
favorite author. If you stop to realize it, his
career is still just beginning. With sixteen books
under his belt in six years, he is well on his way to a
long and fruitful career. None of the big hitters in
suspense have had a start like this. Not Stephen
King, not Michael Crichton, and not even Tom Clancy.
Dekker's novels incorporate the best of all three of these
great authors. Ted's novels reach the top of the
charts, and he's also a hot commodity in Hollywood.
The Circle Trilogy is under consideration at 20th
Century Fox, and the studio snatched up the rights to
his most recent book, House, which he co-wrote with
Frank Peretti. Ted Dekker transcends genres. You can
not simply call him a Christian fiction writer, you
must simply call him a writer. His novels can appeal
to anybody, not just Christians. Any lover of
suspense will find it very hard to not enjoy one of
Ted Dekker's novels. As your parents probably used to
say, "try it, you might like it."
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