Customer Reviews

Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth's Last Days (Left Behind No. 1)

5 star:		(1,375)
4 star:		(296)
3 star:		(161)
2 star:		(113)
1 star:		(329)

 

 

I tend to side with those reviewers who found the book rather light. With the exception of Rayford Steele, most of the characterizations lack depth and consistency. The authors occasionally drop off into mini-sermons that clash otherwise with the flow of the story. And as the events of Revelation unfold, the good and bad become too transparent, too black and white, and too obvious. As suggested by another reader, I read the first of the Christ Clone Trilogy and was much more impressed. In the end, Left Behind comes across as the basis for a television miniseries than a fully fleshed novel. I'm not as harsh as some critics, so I give it three stars for being readable, not too preachy, and interesting in its way.

The idea of the book is great, though done before. The way this book is written though, basically, chronicals the events that take place in the "end-times" as described in the Bible.

The book revolves around some central characters. They all are involved with the church in one way or another. Eventually you see most of them "converted" into Christians. As they are they feel that their "mission" is to convert others. There also is some romantic "tension" thrown into the mix. The characters aren't all developed too well but I still felt a connection with them.

I enjoyed this book and think that many others will too. Although this book, I feel, was written mainly for Christians. There is no subtlety in the message. Everything is taken almost verbatim from the Bible. It doesn't give you a lot of "food for thought". For that I recommend James BeauSeigneur's "The Christ Clone Trilogy". "Left Behind" is pretty straight forward and a great beginning to the series. Highly recommended for Christians.

I've read all but two of the books in this series but I'm not sure why I keep reading. They are so so at best. If you have a lot of time on your hands or you drive a lot and can get the tapes at the library, great. They are no where near as good as the Christ Clone Trilogy by James BeauSeigneur.

This is a review of the entire series, not an individual book.

Here's a detailed review of the series.

WARNING: SPOILERS
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Essentially this series is about world domination. An advanced alien civilization is trying to enslave the human race with minimal physical effort over a long period of time (2000+ years or so.) They appear to humanity and demonstrate acts of "magic" which is obviously technology advanced enough to seem like magic to undeveloped civilizations. They tell the humans that they're going to take away a portion of humanity to signal their return after an undetermined period of time, at which time they would rule the world. They also go in to detail about some other events to signal their return, such as temporarily distorting the sun's visible light spectrum. They then disappear, but not before they put some sort of genetic marker on a portion of the human population. Humanity progresses with some societies passing down stories of the amazing magical being. Fast forward to present day and the aliens return to abduct the descendents of the humans that received the genetic marker, now numbering in the millions, thereby fulfilling the "prophecy."

This is where the science loses me a bit. The marked humans disappear completely, leaving clothes & jewelry behind. I'm assuming this is some sort of teleportation system that locks on using the genetic marker, but I'm not entirely sure because the authors didn't go in to detail. Regardless, the humans are transported to a storage facility (another planet or dimension?) and held for use later in the series.

The disappearance sparks a world-wide civil war, pitting those that believe the aliens are some sort of deity against those that don't. Many of the alien prophecies come true, the Sun's light disappearing, etc., which makes sense since they planned it all along.

Nuclear civil war destroys the infrastructure of the world, much like why Skynet planned in the Terminator franchise. At the end the aliens finally reappear and bring back the millions they've had in stasis. They use some sort of neutron bomb/weapon to obliterate one side of the civil war--I can't remember which. The surviving side now worships the aliens as deities and they assume complete control over the Earth.

I hope there's a few more books planned describing the after effects of this enslavement. What do the aliens want? Breeding ground, resources, slave species?

As an evangelical Christian and a lover of literature, I cannot help but feel these books are an embarassment to the faith as well as to good literature itself. I have to admit I read several of them (they came highly recommended) and was apalled at the shallowness of the characters, not to mention the robot-like plots. I kept reading because I thought they couldn't possibly be as bad as I thought, but indeed they continued to get worse as I turned each page.

I didn't see the 60 minutes interview that the previous reviewer mentioned, but wish I had. I do not bathe myself in theological rhetoric, and so didn't think I would be overly offended or supportive of anything in the books. I did think I would be able to respect Tim LaHaye in the end, but after reading this bunk, I think his agenda here strictly financial and has no bearing whatsoever to impact people (Christians or non) in a positive way. He should be ashamed of himself for a number of reasons after printing these books, but alas, clearly enjoys the growing popularity these books bring to his bank account.

These books prey on the minds of the feeble at heart and people who probably have a pretty shallow understanding of who God is to begin with. I know I do speak for a very large part of evangelical Christianity when I say these books are an embarassment to the faith.

Not worth the paper they were printed on. If I could give it zero stars, I would, but they don't let you do that on this Web site.

I was introduced to the Left Behind series through the film version of this novel. I thought the concept was interesting, but I found the characters uninteresting, the dialogue ridiculous, and the pacing extremely slow. Or maybe I was just blinded by my hatred of Kirk Cameron. Whatever. At any rate, my boyfriend of the time loaned me the novel so I could see if it was any better than the movie.

The book does correct several things I had issues with in the movie. That does not, however, excuse what an incredibly terrible piece of writing this is. I read more challenging novels in the third grade. If you can handle Nancy Drew, you should be ready for this novel. The character development is practically non-existant. Characters seem willing to change their entire world-view over remarkably silly things, and with relatively little internal struggle. And (as was mentioned in a previous review) the margins are ridiculously large (one assumes in an effort to make the book seem longer).

I'm not going to get into the theology - other than to say that I'm catholic, and I personally do not believe in a lot of things mentioned here. But live and let live I say (even if the book's authors disagree with me). What I couldn't stand was the incredibly disrespectful tone the book took towards other religions. I found the Republicanism offensive as well - because Chrisitian is not synonimous with Republican, believe it or not.

It wasn't persuasive or accessible enough to be a good piece of religious propaganda, and the writing was too poor for Sci-fi. Therefore I have to rate this as one of the worst books I've read.

About halfway through this book a preacher tells his flock what they can expect during the "Tribulation" which has just begun, namely, a series of Judgments which only get worse as time goes on. Unfortunately, the same can be said for the writing in this series. Which is a shame, since the first book is actually quite good, if judged on its own terms.

First off, it is written from the perspective that, according to Biblical prophesy, we are about to enter the "End Times," a seven year period of time in which the Antichrist comes to power on Earth. If this sort of religious literalism turns you off, you'd best not try reading this book. On the other hand, if you can accept this, and ignore certain episodes of plot silliness (such as a bizarre Russian attack on Israel), this book is a fine read. Certainly there is plenty of drama as the characters have to deal with the reality of a mass vanishing of millions of people, as well as the rise of a Clintonian style politician from Romania who, despite starting as a minor member of his country's parliament, seems destined to become the leader of the entire planet. That, plus the knowledge that, in just a few years, the Earth will suffer a series of disasters that will dwarf anything in human history, and all the makings of a terrific thriller are here in spades. And this book, the first in a series which now numbers eight volumes, delivers the goods.

Unfortunately, the rest of the books in this series just fall flat. The characters are never developed beyond what we see in the first book, and worse, the series seems to descend to a level of shallowness that becomes positively insulting to the intelligence of the reader. Despite living in times of great terror and suffering, one never gets the sense that anyone actually experiences this in any meaningful way. People simply bounce from one adventure and location to another like characters in a James Bond movie. Not to mention, the plot is dragged out waaaay too long. There are supposedly going to be 12 books in all when the series is completed, which at about 400 pages a book, works out to almost 5,000 pages, of which perhaps 4,000 could be edited out with no loss at all to the reader.

To be perfectly honest, a savvy reader could save himself a lot of times (and money) by simply reading "Left Behind", then getting the non-fiction work "Are we living in the End Times?" by the same authors, which will at least satisfy your curiosity on the final outcome without having to hack your way through eleven more volumes, the last of which won't even be out for at least another year or two.

Christians believe that as the End Time comes, God will gather all the real Christians around his throne in Heaven, body and soul.

This book centers on those 'left behind' on earth. It shows the chaos that emerges as millions of people disappear, how people try to figure out what happend, how some re-find their fate in God, and how the Anti-Christ emerges. It's a well structured, swift paced book that focusses on world events as well as on personal experiences of people. I could not put it down, even though I wanted to.

The downside of the book is that (though cleverly hidden behind all the action) it still will be felt by the non-believer, that the authors are hoping to persuade people to their Christian believes. That spoils some of the uncomplicated fun of reading this. On the upside: for those who DO believe in Christ this will make the book a warm bath that will strengthen their beliefs.

On the whole I liked Beauseigneur's Christ Clone Trilogy better, because it offered more food for the mind, appeared better researched in worldly matters such as the United Nations politics, and didn't seem so focussed on the conversion of people in the book and outside of it.

This is the first in a very long (I think there a 10 so far!!) series of books that tell of the end of the world as foretold in the book 'Revelations' of the bible.
If you took the bible's apocalyptic prophecy. Put an unimaginitve spin on it. Added some 2 dimensional characterizations and truely ridiculous plot lines, (the russians launch an all out nuclear attack against israel because the israelis have developed a means to fertilize deserts, does that make sense to you?) then add some thinly veiled preaching and you have this book.

Having said that I found my curiosity helped me through this book. I was ignorant of the book of Revelations predictions. I was curious enough to see how events would unfold to keep reading thru the 1st 3 books. But the scenario unfolds painfully slowly if you find the characters dull and unbelievable.

In the 3rd book many pages are devoted to explaining things that I had already read in the previous books, that was very tedious. After the 3rd book my curiousity about the prophecies was not enough to overcome my boredom.

I have found "The Christ Clone Trilogy" much more enjoyable.

Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, Left Behind (Tyndale, 1995)

So I figured after nine years, it was time for me to get around to reading the first book in the bestselling Christian fiction series in history, Left Behind. I had always avoided it, not because of the subject matter, but by and large books that break records tend to be writ large by those with the wit, talent, and grammatical skill of overly enthusiastic six-year-olds. Dame Barbara Cartland, Danielle Steel, Tom Clancy, John Grisham, Sandra Brown, you get the idea. Why should Christian fiction be any different?, I wondered. But despite all that, I dove into it.

Expecting the worst may not have been enough. To call the book naïve would be, perhaps, too kind. It uses the conventions of satire without being in any way satiric, treats its readership like total idiots, has all the spelling and grammar mistakes one could possibly want from a mass-produced piece of claptrap, and various other things, all of which I will attempt to make sound as tactful as possible below. But the bottom line, for those who would rather stop reading now, is this: plot's not bad, but execution is some of the worst I have seen outside self-publishing. Ever.

Without getting into the theological aspects of the book, it is impossible to write a comprehensive review of Left Behind without at least glossing over some of the more interesting (and less Biblical) assertions made by the authors, the most notable being the Rapturing (for lack of a better term) of everyone under the age of puberty. Hmmmmm. Including the ones in juvenile detention for murder? Okay, we'll drop the point. After all, our society is based (wrongly) on the idea that people can't make up their minds until they reach the magic age of eighteen. At least LaHaye and Jenkins dropped the magic age to twelve, for which they must get grudging respect.

But little niggling theological concerns are perhaps less galling than LaHaye and Jenkins' complete and utter inability to ascribe a mote of intelligence to any of their characters, and by inference any of their audience. Not being a Christian and a regular attendee at church, I can't say for certain what the average joe learns about the end times. But even without regular church attendance for the last number of years, I remember enough of the Revelation of St. John from Bible study back in the day to have seen all the major twists coming at least a hundred pages before they actually do. And yet his characters, including the wife and daughter of a fundamentalist, are completely oblivious. Writing a book like this as a mystery/thriller, it seems, was not the way to go. Or if it were, perhaps adding a couple of extras who might have looked like they, too, could be the Antichrist might have helped with the suspense angle. (They do attempt a move exactly like this, but way too late and way too ineffectively.)

I spent at least a hundred fifty pages of this book wondering, "where's the satire?" It was, of course, absent; LaHaye and Jenkins are deadly serious about approaching this series as novels mirroring the born-again Christian take on the end times. And yet despite their seriousness, they embrace the conventions of satire with open arms. Their businesses are thinly-disguised actual corporations with names that, in other circumstances, might be considered clever digs at those companies; their characters' names are ludicrous without being prophetic, a favorite mechanism of Dickens and Pynchon; the characters are often overwrought (and, really, it takes a good deal of mastery of the dime novel to make characters overact ON PAPER!); the aforementioned predictability in the mystery; you name it. It's all got the surface makings of great satire. Which makes me wonder how cool it would actually be if, after the series is finished, LaHaye and Jenkins called a press conference and yelled "April fools!" But I don't see that happening, and neither do you.

Fully addressing the spelling and grammatical horrors in this book would take a book-length review, so we'll just note their existence, sneer at them, and move on to the stilted dialogue, the characters (who are cardboard cutouts of the thinnest stripe) and their inability to relate to one another (aside from, one assumes, snickering at the silliness of each others' names in the background), the constant use of cliché, the stopping of the plot every once in a while to throw in some gratuitous moralization (but this being right-wing Christian fiction, I expected a three-hundred-page altar call; I was not disappointed), and all the other little pieces of amateurism that add up to this book being of such horrible architecture that its popularity is really worth weeping over for the lover of the English language. It is obvious, here more than anywhere, that people are more than willing to overlook fatal flaws in the language as long as they can understand the book's message. St. McLuhan has lost the battle once and for all, and sixty-two million copies of the Left Behind novels speak with the public's booming voice: the message is the medium.

It's enough to make a body want to give up reading. * ½