Empire's End by Jerry Jenkins

Jerry B. Jenkins’s new novel is filled with adventure, drama, historic people and places, and even romance. Empire’s End tells the story of a man who single- handedly turned the Roman Empire on-end. It will be the heart-stopping story of the year! Only a few snapshots of Paul’s life are revealed in the Bible. In this fictional account, Jenkins tells of a devout Jewish scholar, who after only three years in the Arabian wilderness, emerges as the greatest Christian theologian in history. This novel explains how, after supervising the death of Jesus’s disciples, Paul would be moved to effectively conquer the Roman Empire with a message about a Jewish man named Jesus. You’ll be captured by the shocking “thorn in the flesh” that burdened Paul’s heart. Empire’s End will cause you to rethink whether Paul ever experienced the love of a woman or the embrace of a child. 


My review:
   This is a sequel to "I, Saul", which was an awesome read. It went back and forth between a modern story and the author's idea of Paul the Apostle's life before he became a Christian. This book is different in that it is all about Paul from shortly before he becomes a Christian, throughout much of his life. It is also written from the first person point of view instead of the third person point of view, as the first was.

  Jerry Jenkins is an exceptional writer and author, and he did a great job on this story. I would call it biblical fiction since it is about Paul the Apostle, and Jenkins does a great job of filling in the gaps with his imagination of what we don't read about Paul in the Bible. He does a lot more character development of Paul than what we know of him. I enjoyed the book, but didn't like it as well as the first, and part of that may be because it is different from what I have read by Jenkins before, and I was expecting the book to be more like the book it follows.

  I would still recommend it, and one does not have to read the first book before they read this one. It can stand alone.

Empire's End is available from Worthy Publishing.

Thanks to Worthy for the review copy.

About the author:

Jerry Bruce Jenkins is an American novelist and biographer. He is best known as co-author of the Left Behindseries of books with Tim LaHaye. Jenkins has written over 180 books, including mysteries, historical fiction, biblical fiction, cop thrillers, international spy thrillers, and children's adventures, as well as non-fiction. His works usually feature Christians as protagonists. In 2005, Jenkins and LaHaye ranked 9th in Amazon.com's 10th Anniversary list of Hall of Fame authors based on books sold at Amazon.com during its first 10 years. Jenkins and his wife Dianna have three sons and eight grandchildren.