Rating: 
Summary: Implausible plot, boring style, New Age Baloney.
Review: I first read this book at a point in my life when I was disillusioned and feeling bored. I was emotionally vulnurable and if someone had presented me with a credible alternative to my existence, I might have taken it up. I was planning a trip to Ecuador and so this book seemed to come at the right time. Then I started to read. I got about 5 pages in, then checked the ISBN panel. I had thought originally that this was a non-fiction travel and experiences book but pretty quickly realised that I'd been had and that it was a low grade work of fiction. The clangers came faster than I could count them - an ancient text written in Aramaic, in South America? Nice idea, but no explanation. And how does our hero find the text? Well, it's been translated and typed up by some monks who have neatly separated this ancient Gospel into 9 insights. The phrase "he handed me a slim blue folder containing 20 sheets of paper" occurs every time until, by the end, we must picture our man laden with a sack of folders like some student with a lot of lectures to go to. Despite the fact that each insight is 20 pages long, Redfield soon pares it down to a bumper-sticker quote. The insights were all so earth-shattering that I've forgotten them all - except for one about there being four basic types of person; control freaks, sufferers and so on. I only remember this because at a course on "how to be an effective public speaker" at work in 1984 - we got exactly the same stuff. Buy this book if you like tedious, boring English written by teenagers, philosophy that insults your intelligence and re-reading cliches you've read before. By the way, what is the Aramaic for "Poor-Me"?
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Summary: In response to a review...
Review: <It's a game. Like chess or Monopoly. (Ever read the instructions for Monopoly? not exactly great literature.) TCP lays out the rules of the game; play as long as you like and then get back on your superhighway anytime... Me? I'm havin' a ball!> He, he, he... Great analogy, but I think that this game should have neither passed go nor collected $200... But hey... Since it did I'm glad it's here! It's like William Faulkner said, "Read, read, read. Read everything--trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it." It bored me, and I hated it. You might think it exciting and love it. But at least it's there as a standard, high and low, for all to rip apart or adore. Cheers. END
Rating: 
Summary: Nothing to write home about!
Review: I read this book last year. While I don't disagree with anything in that book, I think it's mostly fluff and cotton candy. Kind of exciting and fun to read, but when finished and forgotten, never really having done you much good. The author only says what he knows people want to here. But he never delves deeply into things. (I have nothing against that. In fact, I wish I could do it. The book has obviously made a lot of money.) If you want to read a really good book about similar topics, I really recommend "The Tao of Physics". This book will blow your mind, and take you to new levels of thinking far better than "The Clestine Prophecy" does. Read it!!
Rating:
Summary: What if...
Review: I can't help but wonder who's ill-fated idea (except monetarily, of course) it was to make this into a work of fiction. And worse yet, an *adventure* novel??!! Come on! Was it Redfield's original idea, or did the publisher tell him, "We want you to turn your ideas into a page-turning novel, one that any 3rd grader can read without difficulty." Yeah, well, they got the 3rd grade reading level part down. Unfortunately they missed the mark by a mile on the page-turning side of that coin. I also can't help but wonder, "What if...?" What if these nine insights (I couldn't care less about the 10th) had been presented by M. Scott Peck in a "Road Less Traveled" style? If we had been given Peck's literary skills and his technique for making non-fiction interesting by presenting real-life examples of individuals' own scenarios (as opposed to contrived, uninteresting fictional encounters), I wonder how many of us that rated the book 3 or worse might have instead granted it a 5 or 6 rating. I know that I would have been a hell of a lot more receptive had I not been insulted by Redfield's ridiculous, hokey presentation.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent "insight" into human nature
Review: For those of you who are strong, caring individuals who want to make a difference in other people's lives, this book provides excellent "insight" into the way you are probably already living your life. You will probably agree with my rating of 9. The only reason I didn't rate this book a 10 was because the character references became confusing at times. If you are an intellectual moron who thinks he knows the meaning of life already and would rather read a professional psychology journal, then you will probably rate this book a 1 or 2 because it is simply an easy read about the way people are supposed to be living in order to make their lives and the lives of the people they touch much easier.
Rating:
Summary: Shoot me in the head!
Review: This book is the worst I've ever read, and I absolutely hateit. I tried to struggle through it, thinking it would get better, onlyto find that it got worse. I stopped about halfway through, and would be more than happy to use it to start a fire!
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Summary: What's your state of mind?
Review: Those that have a closed mind or are total disbelievers in evolution will more than likely hate this book unless they are being faced with something in life they don't understand and need help with. -- On a side note is it just me or does anybody else notice that each generation of our children seem to be getting smarter and smarter at earlier stages in life? -- Those that have an open mind (such as myself) will more than likely praise this book as absolutely the best in its class and will love it not because it wasn't written by the likes of Shakespeare but because of the way it makes sense of the common occurrences that happen in everyday life, gives direction as to where the human race is heading and helps each of us evolve into a more peaceful and harmonious being.
Rating: 
Summary: Look beyond the writing style
Review: The writing style may be a little diffucult to get into but there is a message that's much more important. If we were all a little more open minded the book might make more sense. Finding a happiness within oneself is the key to happiness in everday dealings. This book helps to give an insight into focusing on what's around us and how we are affecting it rather than how it is affecting us.
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Summary: Spiritually and philosophically illiterate? You'll love it!
Review: P--u -- lleease! The fact that this book is so popular tells me that America has reached a real intellectual nadir. It's poorly written, it's shallow and it's silly. Spiritually, philosophically, literarily and intellectually -- it's a loser in my book.
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Summary: Can't we all just get along?
Review: I tried to read this book a few years ago. I had purchased copies of it for myself and a friend of mine, who is a theologian (now in his early nineties) and one of the most spiritual and well-read people that I know, after he had told me of his interest in reading it. I was exasperated by the poor writing and had a hunch that to finish this book would be a waste of time (the first time I had felt so about a book). By coincidence, my friend expressed great disappointment with this book, which he considered to be lacking in substance. Last week my sister-in-law was reading it and said that she was enjoying it. This made me wonder if there might be a valuable message in the book if I ignored the quality of the writing. So I checked here for comments from other readers and had many, many hearty laughs while reading the variety of opinions expressed. I decided to go ahead and read the book. Now, having finished the whole book, I can reaffirm without hesitation that the best part of The Celestine Prophecy is its book jacket; the prose drafted by that anonymous scribe is superb fiction. Too bad this writer wasn't hired to ghost the book itself; it would have been well-written, at least. Redfield does offer us an important insight into his inspiration for creating The Celestine Prophecy. Toward the end of his quest, the protagonist is told of an incipient economy based on the exchange of spiritual knowledge and that "[p]aying others for their insights will begin the transformation. . . ." Redfield definitely has received my payment for nine insights that, unfortunately for me, are either unoriginal or specious. I hope that future contributors to this "spiritual economy" will offer pearls of wisdom instead of fool's gold.
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