Solar Flare

Rating:
Summary: P.S. What book was "reader from Havelock" reading????
Review:

I read this book (see my review) and was totally replused by it.

I saw these other reviews after I had already written mine. I don't know what the guy from Havelock was reading, but it wasn't the same book I read.

This book contains gleeful accounts of numerous acts of violence, though mostly after the fact. A female Supreme Court Justice who acts to oppose the President in this story is murdered and and it is brushed off as just too bad. A member of congress who "casts an envious eye upon powers of the office of the presidency" (my words, not the author's, but the point is obvious in the text)loses and eye, literally, and is left little more than a vegetable from brain damage, this is again brushed off with a laugh by that same President.

This is violence in its worst form -- presented as righteous payback and treated as a big joke. This book reads as if it were written by a White Supremisist -- every bit as rabid as Osama Bin Laden in his hate of those unlike himself -- "anointed by God" to straighten out the heathen or kill them which ever proves most needful at the time.

I am, as I said in my full review, a devout christian mom and a writer as well. I am not a whiny liberal. I am absolutely pro-life, pro-marriage, pro-monogamy, pro-premartial abstinence, and over-whelmingly anti-welfare. I am known in my community for speaking out for the rights of christians to practice their religious faith openly in public schools. I prayerfully vote republican.

This book is NOT what I would want my kids, or any one else's either, exposed to.

Rating:
Summary: A real dissappointment.
Review: Being familiar with Burkett's non-fiction work, I looked forward to reading this novel. It turned out to be a big dissappointment. The book is filled with characters that are undeveloped and one-dimensional. There are also many inconsistencies and errors. I am afraid I could not recommend this book.

Rating:
Summary: Thinly veiled political trash
Review: Burkett's novel Solar Flare is nothing but strident conservativism thinly disguised as speculative fiction. Not worth buying. Or, if you like this sort of thing, just pick up a copy of The Turner Diaries.

Rating:
Summary: Solar fizzle
Review: Each of Larry Burkett's books seems to be a little less enjoyable and a bit more predictable than the last. I loved The Illuminati and I liked The Thor Conspiracy, but I could take or leave Solar Flare. The writing is a bit too simplistic, melodramatic, and repetitive for me. But if you enjoy Christian fiction, it's still a decent read.

Rating:
Summary: Fire the Editor
Review: Having listened to Larry Burkett talk about the pleasures of being debt free, and last month having achieved that goal, I have a soft spot in my heart for him. I teach a class in a state university on "Apocalyptic Fiction," and I thought "Solar Flare" might be a good choice, so I bought it and read it. I was really astonished. The premise is a good one, and it's an exciting book. I had a hard time putting it down. The chances of a solar flare that destroys civilization are about as likely as the chances of an asteroid doing the same, but it could happen, and it's fascinating to speculate about the results. What astonished me, though, was the terrible editor. Some editors edit, but these days many just arrange publication. Burkett got one of the latter sort this time. The problem is not spelling and punctuation, but deeper. Burkett should have caught these mistakes, so we should blame him, too, but barring that his editor should have caught them. Examples? In chapter one, the hero, Jason Hobart, is an assistant professor. Then in chapter two he is an associate professor, then back to assistant, then back to associate. There are paragraphs of dialogue or explanation used almost verbatim in two or more chapters, as if Burkett wrote the chapters a week or two apart and never went back to tie things together and forgot what he had already written. A gang from Indianapolis decides to raid a refugee camp in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, about 500 miles away, and makes the trip in twelve hours--by horse and buggy. A truck caravan is planned to take Prof. Hobart and staff from Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland to New Holland, Pennsylvania, in Amish country, two hours away, traveling by freeway because it's safer. They plan to take I-95 to I-83 to I-78. Fortunately instead they turn onto highway 30 to Lancaster, because you can't get there from here. And it takes them eight hours, much to long. Most of the people in the cities are exacuated to the country, supposedly, and placed in relocation camps of about 25,000 people. But there are only three camps within a 500 mile radius of Washington, even though this includes massive areas of great farm land in Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, etc. Burkett says that the little towns of Pennsylvania are mostly deserted. This seems unlikely, as they would provide plenty of shelter and tools and food (ever heard of grain elevators and corn cribs and feed stores?) and most houses are usually within a couple blocks of good garden plots. Is this a Christian novel? It's not about the return of Christ, and Christianity isn't mentioned until about 3/4th of the way through. When it is, suddenly most of the refugee camp "accepts Christ as their personal savior," then everything is fine. As someone with an undergraduate degree in Journalism, I realize that a lot of news people will lie and cheat and manipulate in any way necessary for a story, and many are terribly biased and have their own agenda. However, the picture of the news media portrayed by Burkett is unrealistically dark. Even if they didn't like the president, surely if there were the chance of a massive solar flare destroying all electrical motors and downing all planes in the air, all the news media would cover this in detail, rather than insisting that it won't happen, simply because they crave bad news, and this is terrible news. Look at what they've done with Y2K! So, read this novel only if you can put up with this sort of problem. If you like world catastrophe novels, this is nowhere near as well-written as Stephen King's "The Stand," but it's pretty cool.

Rating:
Summary: Not even good enough to entertain me in class!
Review: I get pretty bored sometimes at school, but I've had more excitement staring at my feet than I did reading parts of this book. Some of us were required to read it during a unit on the solar system,but we should have stuck to the textbook. I found it poorly written, and my English education so far only extends to the eighth grade!I thought the author repeated a lot of conversations almost word-for-word, but in other places contradicted himself. The plot was far-fetched and didn't move at all smoothly. Also, it focused too much on the author's political views. Where did he get this deep resentment of liberals and the media?The opinions were entirely too one-sided and the religious ones shallow and sketchy. And how many gang stories can you tell before it starts getting monotonous? Some of the characters seemed to be introduced just so they could be killed off. I didn't like the book's plot or its style, and couldn't really reccomend it. I have read worse books, but not voluntarily.

Rating:
Summary: A fun read.
Review: I have read this book and have found it to be quite enjoyable.
I love what if scenario's.

Rating:
Summary: Great book, shows how people must make important descisions
Review: I love this book! yes it is easy to read, but it shows how some people must make descisions fast to survive. It shows how a solar flare hits earth and everything electrical dies. How people all over the USA have to move to camps and we can relate this to our time now and how we must be thankful for what we have and should not waste it. It is good for a non-beliver just getting to know Jesus Christ and how others deal with it too. And tells some really cool fight scenes and how people in our world can be so vile. Hope this was helpful!Good book!

Rating:
Summary: Great book, shows how people must make important descisions
Review: I love this book! yes it is easy to read, but it shows how some people must make descisions fast to survive. It shows how a solar flare hits earth and everything electrical dies. How people all over the USA have to move to camps and we can relate this to our time now and how we must be thankful for what we have and should not waste it. It is good for a non-beliver just getting to know Jesus Christ and how others deal with it too. And tells some really cool fight scenes and how people in our world can be so vile. Hope this was helpful!Good book!

Rating:
Summary: A riveting textbook!!
Review: I thought Solar Flare was one of the best books I've ever read. No one can keep the suspense of a solar flare up to a climax throughout the entire book like Larry Burkett. The book characters are so cool that you wish they were real people and I think it'd be awesome to have a president with real moral like the one portrayed in the book. I didn't know the slightest thing about solar flares until I read this book. It taught me a lot! It really does make you wonder about the gangs roaming our big city streets though.....