Conservative Christian black reporter deals with prejudice of all types: liberal, conservative, conscious, and unintentional. Pleanty of good insights on racism, reverse racism, and beyond. But annoying when characters feel that every white represents white privilege, when many were oppressed immigrants and played no part in the shameful history of slavery.

Great book

This book was clean (no foul language or sex). It gave me a better glimpse and understanding of life after death, both in heaven and hell. Thanks for such a good read.

An incredible novel addressing racism and other social issues. Highly, highly recommend!

I guess i actually listened to an abridged version of the book. Bummer.

My main critique is that i felt the author was trying too hard to be even handed in portraying racism on all sides (white, asian, and black).

I loooved this book when I read it in 2014. I only have good memories of it. I’m not much of a mystery reader, but let me tell you this was goooooood!

This book is probably responsible of changing my perspective on heaven and the things that happen there. What a great work.

Randy Alcorn addresses racism from a Biblical perspective while telling a great story.

This novel has a good plot and it captured my attention from the beginning. However like 'Deadline' the author goes into too much detail in this case about the racial tensions. This detracts from the actual story which I believe gives the message the Author is wanting to get across. Also found the Heaven scenes not relevant to the actual storyline except maybe at the very end when Obadiah goes to be with the Lord. I found myself skimming past a lot of the irrelevant parts and just focused on the actual storyline.

2.5 stars. It's hard to summarize the depths of this book. It builds on the first in a weird way; and heavily explores some of its own issues. It is eye-opening in some ways; but I do believe there are much better resources to educate oneself on the complexities of inequality and spirituality.

A great mystery and Christian fiction. The pictures in heaven have had a profound affect on my looking forward to it! I've even gone through my copy and marked these so I can come back and find them easily. I've read it many times. Thanks, Randy!

I love the ideas about heaven that Alcorn portrays. The story is well written and complex with some mystery, some history, and serious thought -provoking ideas. I look forward to the next book in the series.

Plot is okay. Dialogue is preachy and heavy-handed. The heaven scenes are distracting. Many chapters could be condensed into 2 paragraphs. This is unfortunate, because he is dealing with issues of great relevance: understanding experiences far removed from our own, empathy, acknowledging our own biases. I read this several years ago and it recently came to my mind during a conversation about racial issues. Thinking back, I believe the author does manage to get his message across in spite of the fact that his writing made it impossible for me to suspend disbelief. I am not sorry I read it.

In the second book of this trilogy, newspaper columnist Clarence Abernathy loses his sister in a senseless murder. He takes in her kids and relentlessly seeks justice. Doing so means mucking through the darkness of gang violence and racial tension and learning about how good and evil battle for dominion.
Love this series. Love the friendship Jake and Clarence have. Ollie is a little on the outside at first because he has very different convictions, but I love that guy. There were some implications about racial tension that I disagree with, such as the idea that television villains wearing black contributes to associating black people with crime. Love the comparison between gangs fighting for territory and evil fighting to gain ground.