Rating: 
Summary: An education and a great read!
Review: A great read from a prolific author who has changed our times. I appreciated his historical overview of Science Fiction and Fantasy in the preface. There are so many elements of good story telling in this book that I understand it is used in many university Writing classes. The ending is especially strong and should not be missed.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting premise, poor delivery
Review: This book was based on an interesting plot concept. Had the book been written by a more accomplished author it could have been much better. The underlying plot is interesting, but it is not handled well. The entire book is made of an incredible string of implausible situations and extremely lucky breaks. Most of the action ends in the first half of the book. The second half meanders tediously through comparitively dull plot lines. If you are at all familiar with Hubbard's beliefs you will find them littered very heavily through the latter section of the novel. It makes me amazed that scientology can gain members. The poor plot handling is nothing compared to the poor characters however.
The characters are very two-dimensional. The 'good guys' are too perfect, handsome, intelligent, esentially flawles. The villans are just as worthless. The average psychlo is stupid, cruel, insane, and smelly, yet we are led to believe that they have conquored 16 universes. They only seem to succeed in getting (quite easily I might add) defeated by a group on ignorant savages. The human villans in the second half of the book are just as bad. Smelly, stupid, insane, and extremely gullible. I found it interesting the the evil brown limper was the only character with a physical defect. Hubbard apparently equates physical perfection with goodness. I guess anybody ugly or different must be evil. Only perfect caucasion specimines can be 'good'. The whole thing comes off feeling very aryan, despite his treatment of Hitler. The few female characters seem to be mainly there as decoration. They have no real personality or depth.
Hubbard's grasp of science ranges from pathetic to non-existant. Because of this most of the technology is not very believable to any reader past a third grade education. Seems odd coming from a man who has claimed to be a nuclear physicist. You would expect him to know basic atomic concepts, much less how a periodic table works. Read it if you must, but don't buy it. Give your library card a workout on this one.
Rating:
Summary: Probably the worst review I've given
Review: "Battlefield: Earth" undoubtably elicits a number of emotions from people. Some regard it as the penultimate work of science fiction ever written. Others think it the outline of a lunatic's religion. Mostly though, people just think of John Travolta and laugh.The book is helped fantastic storytelling, but suffers from many crippling problems. The first, major problem is the length. Clocking in at 1050 pages, Hubbard tries to hold your attention throughout years of events. At this, he fails. The story starts off very strong, gripping from the first line. After about 400 to 500 pages, when the story could've been easily finished, it starts to slide. It was dry reading from the start, but for the first half of the book there were at least some exciting events happening. The latter half has little of that. And yes, Hubbard's writing does indeed read like a children's book, but consider that even with his choppy structure it's a long book. Would you rather read a slightly better, but longer version? Now then. complaint number two: the characters. I found the Psychlos to be far more interesting than the humans. Terl was always cunning and the only thing that kept me reading was to see what he had planned next. Of course, after page 500 he pretty much just sat around on his furry bum. Ker was another good character, albiet cliched, along with Chirk. Numph and Zzt also added good elements too the plot. As for the humans, I couldn't care less what happened to them. Jonnie Goodboy Tyler was annoyingly confident. Hubbard writes him as if he can do no wrong. I was almost rooting for his rival to get revenge on him. His "girlfriend" Chrissie (yes, Chrissie -- Valley Girl of the Future) and he are in love ... or so we assume. It's never really said nor clear why they like each other. Overall, it's not a bad book; it's simply overwieldy and dry. Perhaps if it were written as two or three books, it might fare better, but then Mr. Hubbard wouldn't have the "longest SF novel ever written under his belt". Is it worth reading? Yes. Will you have to force yourself through it? Yes. Will you be satisfied? ... you'll have to see. Can John Travolta ever redeem himself? Only if Tarantino does that "Vega Brothers" film.
Rating: 
Summary: WATCH OUT!!! It's Abridged.
Review: This version is only 8 hours long. The box even says it's abridged. The unabridged version is 45 hours. I hope I helped out.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Story!
Review: Unlike the movie, this is an excellent book! The story was totally altered for the movie, so the book will not be predictable. L. Ron Hubbard did a great job in keeping the reader interested. After reading the paperback, I ordered the hardcover to keep in my library.
Rating:
Summary: I've READ this book & not cheated by watching the movie
Review: As my tagline states, I've read (several times actually) all 1066 pages (paperback) and have not cut corners by watching the movie. By the way, the movie was the worst screen adaptation that I've ever seen. The plot moves along well with a majority of action rather than character development. For instance, certain characters such as Chrissie and Pattie receive little or no attention. This is in contrast to how their plight supposedly motivated the Scots. I also feel that Terl was somewhat emasculated after having been portrayed as a great diabolical mind in the beginning chapters. At about the mid-point of the story everything was just falling into place for the "good" guys and the suspense I had come to expect was absent. However, after this short interlude, other factors presented themselves and the suspense came roaring back. Overall, I feel the writing is good, though not stellar. I find it interestingly to contemplate how the exact same plot would fair in the hands of another wordy author, say Robert Jordan. Jordan definitely develops his characters while retaining a good deal of action in some rather long works. That might be like wondering how a Norman Rockwell would look if done by Picasso. At any rate, I would recommend Battlefield Earth to those not intimidated by its length, the movie adaptation or it's authors eccentricities.
Rating:
Summary: Good science fiction novel.a little long
Review: This is a good science fiction novel. It's starts out with the Psychlos having invaded earth because they found an ancient space probe that was made of a rare metal so they decided to invade and take over earth. The Psychlo who starts to mess up things is an alien named Terl who devises a plan to mine resuorces by using what is left of the remaining local human popualtion. Enter Johnny Good-Boy Tyler. Terl's plans run afowl when Johhny is a lot smater than he thinks and starts to devise a way to get rid of the Psychlos, but has two human nemsis's Brown Limper and Snith. At any rate, Johhny suceeds in getting rid of the Psychlos.
Rating: 
Summary: So-so sci-fi
Review: Somewhat interesting story that could have used some major editing. Overall not bad but probably not worth the time.
Rating:
Summary: Review on audiobook version
Review: 1) This is probably my 10th audiobook this year...and it was a fun one. Roddy McDowell does a very fine job of the reading and even does believable alternate voices and great "acting out" of a characters emotions for the scene. 2) About 2/3rd of the way through the entire story shifts/transitions and really doesn't have much more to do with the struggle of humanity against the Psychlos. Without spoiling the ending...the shift requires a few BIG leaps in faith to eliminate the disbelief of the following events. 3) Even though the last 1/3 of the book was a big disbelief section it was fun and reminded me of the feel to classics like Assimov's "Foundation" and Card's "Ender's Game"...where the "action" of the story lies with the ability of the protagonist(s) to talk their way through situations vs. using brute force. 4) I wish the cover on this book didn't have any reference to the movie because the movie plain sucked! I saw the movie before getting my hands on this book and was a little leary when I did. But based on such high praise from readers I'm glad I got the "real" story vs. the lame hollywood movie version.
Rating:
Summary: First class adventure!
Review: This was the first 1000+ page book I have read and I was not disapointed in the least bit. Its a great tale of adventure, action, suspense, tradgedy and so much more. -SM
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