"The Silence: The End Is Near", by Jim Kraus

The Silence

Jim Kraus' "The Silence: The End is Near" is a weak attempt - a very weak attempt - at Christian eschatology. Your premise is basic post-apocalyptic fare - a series of massive natural disasters wrecks the planet, and the survivors have to move beyond the nightmare and into the dawn of a new era. There is the usual collapse of civilization and authority, the usual battle of good vs. evil…the usual everything, really. The only unusual thing about this book is how plain and ordinary the writing is.

The characters are as interesting and as complex as cardboard; plot developments are posted miles in advance; dialog is horrendously amateur and plain - everybody uses the same swear words, "blazes" or "blasted", hardened criminals insult their victims by calling them "doofus", and antagonists don't use grammatically correct English - lots of "ain't" and double negatives. Protagonists, of course, speak perfectly.

I can't help but shake the impression that "The Silence" is an attempted Christian re-shoot of Stephen King's "The Stand" - the post-apocalyptic wasteland aside, the major characters have dreams about the dark days after the worldwide catastrophe. But while the dreams in "The Stand" are lush, surreal visions, the dreams in "The Silence" look as though they're sketched by a three-year old. One character receives a portent of doom via sharp stabbing pains in her stomach. Maybe she tried to read this book, I don't know.

Jim Kraus has evidently never owned a dog before, because the most severe offense against the literary sensibilities comes in the form of a dog named "Revelations". Before you ask, the dog was owned by a Christian end-times fanatic, which would answer that million dollar question, "Who on Earth would name a Golden Retriever 'Revelations'?" But why is this dog such a dog? Because, given how intelligent, perceptive, brave, lucky, and overall wonderful this pooch is, Revelations is less a Golden Retriever and more an angel on four legs. That is, of course, Kraus' intention, but so weakly is the dog written (I mean, how on Earth can you write a dog so poorly?) that we're left far more exasperated than enlightened. Unfortunately, the dog is still as bland as the rest of the characters in the book (even if he is smarter than most of them).

The main antagonist is a weak caricature whose motives are never fully explained - one minute he's a misguided doomsday evangelist, and the other he's a leering, sweaty opportunist with a temper problem. Maybe he's both, but again, he's so inadequately developed that it's hard to feel anything strong about him one way or another.

Kraus knows his Scripture - characters (protagonists, of course), quote verse and chapter, and the text is annotated with Biblical references. I'd like to believe that there are good intentions behind this mess, but there must be far better Christian eschatology books than this one. There have to be.