Book Review: Deadline (Part 2)

I finally finished reading Deadline this week.  It's unusual for me to take so long to read a new book, but I got bogged down in the middle of it for quite awhile.  Randy Alcorn likes his soapboxes, and while I agree with the stance he takes on issues, I wish he would pick a soapbox and stay with it for the whole book!

The list of controversial subjects he addresses includes abortion, sex education in public schools, liberal media bias, doctor assisted suicide, medical decisions concerning quality of life, and Down's syndrome children (among others.)  Reading this book was mentally exhausting at times.  I thoroughly enjoy a fiction book that takes a current controversial topic and uses a story to illustrate a point of view.  For example, Francine River's The Atonement Child is an excellent book that takes on the abortion argument.  What Francine Rivers has discovered (and Randy Alcorn needs to learn,) is that people listen to you better when you teach in parables (as Jesus did.)  The Atonement Child is all about abortion and the way it affects individual lives.  Different characters in the book have different life experiences all illustrating the destructive results such a choice can have.  The many angles shown in the book include abortion for medical reasons, abortion following a rape, the effects on the father, the effects on women physically as well as psychologically, long-term effects on a marriage, etc.  Many angles, yes, but one central focus: the destructiveness of abortion.  And all lived out through the fictional character's lives.

In Deadline, on the other hand, Alcorn jumped around so much that he never finished making a point on many of the topics he brought up.  And instead of illustrating his point of view through the experiences of his characters, he asserts his opinion in the conversations his characters have.  A key difference that makes the book read more like nonfiction than fiction in parts.  This is also where the reader gets bogged down.  One particular conversation filled nine pages.  Again, I agree with what he said, but I read fiction more than nonfiction for a reason- I like learning through illustrations.  

The book did address the plight of Doc (the nonbeliever)- briefly.  Alcorn's ideas about hell could start as much discussion as his ideas about heaven.  In the last chapters, the story line picked up again, and the "whodunit" aspect became exciting at the end.  In my opinion, the central story of Jake trying to find his friends' killer needed to tie together throughout the story more, and Alcorn needed to save a few controversies for another book.  I'll be interested to see his future work on this series.