Rating: 
Summary: Not what I expected
Review: After reading The General's Daughter I wanted to give Demille another read since I enjoyed it so much. I was not disappointed. At first I was thinking....man this is not my cup of tea. Peace talks, middle east, history, military talk. But before I got anywhere even near 1/2 way through I was caught. I grew to love and hate the main characters. Demille throws in enough history that the reader gets all the irony of where they are being held captive at. Sure some parts dragged and were a bit on the technical side, but overall this is a great read.
Rating:
Summary: Not what I expected
Review: After reading The General's Daughter I wanted to give Demille another read since I enjoyed it so much. I was not disappointed. At first I was thinking....man this is not my cup of tea. Peace talks, middle east, history, military talk. But before I got anywhere even near 1/2 way through I was caught. I grew to love and hate the main characters. Demille throws in enough history that the reader gets all the irony of where they are being held captive at. Sure some parts dragged and were a bit on the technical side, but overall this is a great read.
Rating: 
Summary: This book will spoil you...
Review: After reading this book, it'll be hard to find anything else you,ll like except another De Mille book. Has lots of easily-disgestible history so you'll also learn a lot.
Rating:
Summary: Simply the finest of the finest by De Mille.
Review: All of De Mille's works are the kind of books that you find yourself engrossed and actually part of the action, but "Babylon" is the best of the best (followed closely by "Word of Honor"). Hausner is a true hero, and you find yourself wanting to be in his shoes, despite his perilous situation.
Rating: 
Summary: Pre-Clancy Techno-Thirller
Review: Although this is one of the better first novels I have ever read, it is by no means great. Demille's action sequences are taught and propell the plot, rather than extend it. However, it is his lack of detailed characterization that drags this book down.Being unfamiliar with the countries and regions that populate this book, I would have liked more background on the different cultures' relations to one another. As it is, this book did little for my understanding of the area and its antecedents. A handful of main characters are explored fully, but all others are so indistinct that I frequently found myself confused on who was who and exactly what country were they all from, anyway? Then there is the matter of divine intervention, such as one character in particular suffers from. That sense of "I know where there are! Sure, there's no logical reason I should know," and the writer is not going to attempt to explain it as anything other than a message from God (or whatever divine entity fits your particular faith), "but still, I know!" This book has its problems, but it is still a good first attempt. If you don't care about characters and just want to read a good action book, this is for you. If you're a Demille fan, you'll likely enjoy it as well.
Rating:
Summary: A gripping look into the war for peace
Review: As a first time reader of Nelson Demille, I must say that this book totally drew me in with vivid details and heart-wrenching stories of heros and villains. As a Jew who has somewhat lost touch with his heritage, "By the Rivers of Babylon" brought a renewed sense of who we are and why we stick together through thick and thin. If you haven't read this one, read it now. If you have read it, pass it on to someone else because the story will delight readers of any religion and age.
Rating:
Summary: Started Out Slow, Later I Grew More Interested
Review: At first the book could not keep me interested; after reading about a third of the book I started catching the DeMille fever. The book increasingly gripped my interest until the end. DeMille's style is among my favorites. This book lacks the sleekness of his later works and is at times confusing to follow. I felt it was still a good read. DeMille fans add a star.
Rating:
Summary: A fantastic story
Review: By the Rivers of Babylon has plenty of action, but it is also richly layered with emotional conflicts and sense of dismay that has befallen the once truly great land of Isreal and Babylon. It tells the story of a country seeking identity through two very diffrent means. I recommend this book and hope people can learn from it.
Rating:
Summary: Fast paced, action filled and hopefully not timeless
Review: DeMille became one of my favorite authors with just one book, The Gold Goast, and oddly enough, that book is quite a bit different from the main genre of the rest of his work which tends to be more military/police/spy type thrillers. After reading several of his recent books, I finally got a chance to go back many years and read this one.
I'll get my one main complaint out of the way, it's the fact that the book has a plethora of characters and I wasn't ever really sure who I was rooting for specifically. As it turns out, the protagonist if you will, is probably the group as a whole, they banded together and survived as a group (even though some of the characters were lost). I guess I can accept that, although I prefer the strong male leads that dominate all the subsequent works by DeMille that I've read.
Even though written nearly three decades ago, not much has changed in world politics and this novel could probably take place in reality tomorrow with only a few minor changes. I often wonder if world security forces go through fiction, after all, Tom Clancy wrote about a pilot flying a jet plane into the White House and later when it was tried for real, everyone acted like "nobody could have ever imagined that". In any case, this book and DeMille's The Lions Game, both have airplanes being terrorized in different and unique ways, I hope someone is taking notice.
As for the why I give this book a strong recommendation, and why I'm sticking with five stars in spite of my complaint, it's a page turner, fast paced and well written, it has military science, love, war, hate and a whole lot more.
Rating:
Summary: Babylon meets Roark's Drift meets the 300 Spartans yada yada
Review: DeMille is great and several of my favorite books, "Word of Honor" for example and "The Lion's Game," are DeMille classics. He is most successful at taking an international issue, the IRA from Belfast, national, domestic letter agencies warring with eachother, and telling a tale about them, around them and through them. Often there is a love story about which to hang other issues, and Babylon is no exception. The peace mission . . . by that I mean THE PEACE MISSION, is about to take off and two Concords are flying from Lod Airport in Israel to New York. And as in every disaster movie, the planes are filled with people who aren't who they seem to be or who they are telling other people they are. What's new? Security has been lax in the fetal stages of the aircrafts' building, and bombs have been placed in the tail of both aircraft. The tool by which DeMille gets us there, in this case Babylon, is nearly irrelevant. What he does is put dozens of different people together, hawks, doves, traitors, heroes, cowards, zealots, and then throws in an untested Palestinian force (the Ashbals) with their great numbers attacking the defending Israelis. Hmmmmm. I wonder if Nelson fell asleep while watching John Wayne's "The Alamo" on cable before he began this prodigious effort? And of course the story is brought together by DeMille's capacity to describe everything from the aluminum mesh in the baggage compartment of the Concord to mascara. And to do so very well. The other DeMille characteristic is dialogue. He has a gift of making his characters speak in a manner in which we can nod our heads and say, 'yeah, a guy in that fix would probably have said something like that.' If there's a drawback to Babylon I believe it is that it doesn't go anywhere. Physically I mean. Other books literally move from point A to point B. Here we are stuck in the desert in a sand storm, kind of motionless, going nowhere. The other point is that DeMille usually has one wisecracking hero-noir who brings us together. Here, there really is no one for the reader to grab on to. Hausner, Teddy, the Rabbi, Burg, Miriam, Rish, Ben Dobkin, Hamedi. They all seem to interrelate but not necessarily with us. I didn't feel "grabbed." Good read. Not his best. 4 stars.
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