This is very well tread territory. I'd say that it's a common sentiment that async action creators aren't particularly satisfying, but there are good reasons to prefer Redux Thunk to the completely manual approach. But it is just one of a number of possible approaches. See Why do we need middleware for async flow in Redux?.
I think the community will probably settle on something other than Redux Thunk in the long run, but its simplicity makes it a good starting point.
