Rating: 
Summary: Left Behind
Review: Having read Left Behind on the recommendation of a fellow Christian, I found the message of the book exceptional. It encourages true Christians to try harder and the non-Christian to make a decision. I can also see it as a useful handbook for those who will be "left behind". The only reason I gave it 3 1/2 - 4 stars was because of the terrible writing. I found myself re-reading passages in order to make sense out of what the author/s were trying to express. It's a good book for the message it's sharing with the rest of the world, but the 10 million copies sold cannot be attributed to the writing skills of the authors. It's still worth picking up and reading.
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Summary: LEFT BEHIND:A TEENAGERS PERSPECTIVE
Review: I just a few minutes ago finished reading a truly life changing book.Now im not saying im going to visit church everyday ,but this novel has had an impact on my life.I am 16 yrs old;and trust me no type of little book is going to have a lasting effect on teenagers in todays age,most would rather to hang with thier friends,play 64,perv on chicks get pissed smoke.whatever,and so what im trying to say is this book has had an incredible on me and im possitive alot more teens if they can be bothered to sit down and read it.im speaking towards the youths in this because adults have the sense to read the book,im not saying teens wouldnt,but thier are things they'd rather do.the only reason i picked up this book is because my dad brought it back from overseas and insisted that i read it ,and i did happily .but not to give the wrong impression im not a nerd its taken me at least 20 mins to type this ,but i do read alot and i am open to many ideas as much as i believe this theory i also believe the theorys of erich von daniken i do believe in god but i like to think that Groucho Marx is my god,i am a chatholic but i also believe in buddhism:hence im buthlich.but yet through the wisdom this book has bestowed on me i might go to church.theres a review in amazon here that gave this book 1 star .and it goes on about errors in the novel.trajeclly of all the author of that reviews sharp journalism intellect,that should be floating around his head he clearly has failed to see that the author is convaying a message of what is to come (im not saying it definantly will but its possible) and its good to see that instead of it being held as some sort of deeply into religion people.(cause i never once heard of this when i went to church)the author has sent this message loud and clear in a very fun intense fast paced novel. It is written very well the charecters are very believible even the thoughts that rayford thinks,you can see how he develops to christian thought and i most enjoyed about it is it makes clear who the antichrist is.no plot twists at such ,it lets you get every step the antichrist is making towards his rise of power then again im still in the first novel i feel that plot twists that may rise.if you can find this novel dont let it slip by read it now...before its to late
Rating: 
Summary: If I could give it less than one star I would
Review: After hearing all the hype about this book my expectations may have been a little high. But I think my disappointment would have been as great even without the buildup. One reviewer pointed out that it was written for the 'low brow' crowd - readers of Clancy and Grisham were mentioned. I would have to disagree - this book is *much* worse than Clancy and Grisham. In fact it is the worst writing I've seen published. It may well be true that the story is exciting - but if you are used to grammatical and syntactically correct writing you might not be able to continue reading long enough to judge.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing book with silly plot
Review: First off, I am a Christian, and although I'm not quite finished with this book, and I've already decided that I won't be reading the rest of the series. While "Left Behind" is a pretty good read, I'm finding the plot to be so convoluted that it's hard to really believe. The plot drags and the characters are so thinly developed that I don't really care if they get saved or not, although I did do a mental cheer when Rayford accepted Jesus as his Saviour, but I saw that coming from Page 1 so it was no surprise. I'm hoping that it's just because it's a multi-book series and that LaHaye and Jenkins will develop the characters more in later books. I was really looking forward to reading the entire series--it came highly recommended by some friends--that all I can say is that I'm really disappointed.
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Summary: A scary and interesting book. Thought provoking!
Review: I started with mixed feelings about this book. Since I have some real intellectual problems with Evangelical Christianity, (after being force fed Jim and Tammy Faye Baker and PTL ministries growing up; who wouldn't); I began this book very skeptically, at first the writing underwelmed me, but very soon into the book I got into the story and the book heats up and delivers numerous closely tied plots in a compelling manner. After a fantastic ride, the reader is left to digest the message. The first book, so far, has good character development, very interesting plot twists and a real heart racing pace towards the end. Supporting the book is clear and well researched biblical prophecy. The characters all have clear and distinct 'voices'; not all the men (even all the born again Christian's) sound the same and not all the women sound the same. Readers of the Left Behind series might be interested in a scientific work that closely supports the predictions of Revelations, an upcoming plague: Laurie Garrett's "Betrayal of Trust" I've overjoyed that there is an ongoing series to continue on with. I also look forward to seeing the writing improve as it has throughout the first book.
Rating:
Summary: A scary and interesting book. Thought provoking!
Review: I started with mixed feelings about this book. Since I havesome real intellectual problems with Evangelical Christianity, (after being force fed Jim and Tammy Faye Baker and PTL ministries growing up; who wouldn't); I began this book very skeptically, at first the writing underwelmed me, but very soon into the book I got into the story and the book heats up and delivers numerous closely tied plots in a compelling manner. After a fantastic ride, the reader is left to digest the message. The first book, so far, has good character development, very interesting plot twists and a real heart racing pace towards the end. Supporting the book is clear and well researched biblical prophecy. The characters all have clear and distinct 'voices'; not all the men (even all the born again Christian's) sound the same and not all the women sound the same. Readers of the Left Behind series might be interested in a scientific work that closely supports the predictions of Revelations, an upcoming plague...I've overjoyed that there is an ongoing series to continue on with. I also look forward to seeing the writing improve as it has throughout the first book.
Rating: 
Summary: An honest assessment
Review: It's amazing to see the way people react to this book. It's either the greatest thing that's ever been written or a vile piece of trash that threatens the progress of civilization itself. Please, people. This is a mediocore book. It's target audience is people who read middle-to-low brow fare like Tom Clancy and John Grisham. It definitely isn't aimed for the same class of people who read C.S. Lewis, or even Stephen King. There are plenty of mediocore books out there, and plenty of people who prefer breezy, hastily-written stuff to serious novels. Left Behind is crap, but if that's what a lot of people like, so be it. I'm more disturbed at how the authors have helped fuel the popularity of a wildly off-base interpretation of the Bible. Before anyone reads this stuff and thinks that this is really how the world is going to end, I suggest you do some real Bible study and see that things like the Pre-Trib Rapture are found NOWHERE inside its pages.
Rating:
Summary: NOT the best Christian book out there
Review: This book and the series of sequels are pretty lame stuff. I've read about half of the first book, and I'm afraid that the only effects the series will have is: 1. Confirm in the minds of many anti-Christians that all evangelicals are low-rent, unintellectual people who follow Pat Robertson and his ilk; and 2. Make the silly obsession with the "Rapture" a priority in many churches again. That idea was finally starting to fade along with Hal Lindsey before these books came along. True, other religions have silly sectarian groups - like the Catholics and the Virgin Mary sightings. But society is much less forgiving of evangelical Christians than any other religious minority, and I'm afraid these books will just provide more fodder for those who hate us. (They actually sell offensive parodies of the Christian Fish in stores...can you imagine anyone driving around with a bumper sticker making fun of Jews or Catholics? Anyone who did that would be pulled off the side of the road and beaten to a pulp in less than half an hour. But it's okay to make fun of us, for some reason.) The authors haven't even bothered to do basic scientific research; in the opening pages they conjecture that Russia will invade Israel to steal crop fertilizer - any research into agricultural science will show that the Soviet Union has huge tracts of unused farmland in the Ukraine! Growing food is not Russia's problem. After that, the writing just gets worse. The Russians try to nuke Israel - why would they do that, when they want to steal Israel's food? It makes no sense, and the whole battle of Gog and Magog is rendered in about 3 paragraphs where the authors wipe out the Russian air force with a hail storm. (Curiously, the authors don't seem to be aware that they are putting the Battle of Armageddon at the START of the apocalypse, when the Bible has this battle at the END.) I'm a 30-year-old journalist myself, and I found the characterization of Buck Williams - the star-writer of Time magazine - to be trite and shallow. Who names a character "Buck?" Rayford Steele, the guilt-ridden flight pilot, is no better. The worst character by far is Hattie Durham, an idiot bimbo flight attendant whose only crime seems to be that she's 27 years old and attractive to middle age men. She has no depth, and the way the authors constantly bring her back just so they can ridicule her for being a silly, hysterical bimbo started to irk me around page 100. I'm hardly pro-feminist, but the depictions of Hattie became too misogynistic and mean-spirited to ignore. I'm determined to get to the end, but it's degenerating into boring tripe by the page. On the plus side, this is THE most politically incorrect best-seller ever written. If you want a book that's willing to call Judaism "wrong," criticize bad (oops - I mean, "progressive") Catholics, slam the Vatican, depict women as weaker than men, and so forth, then these books have a certain appeal. For more serious, thought-provoking fiction with a spiritual theme, I'd recommend Stephen King's The Green Mile or The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. They both made me think a lot more about God than this shlock ever will.
Rating:
Summary: I agree with Tim Leider
Review: Unlike Tim Leider, one of the reviewers on this site, I did NOT walk away from the Christian faith when I was a teen - it takes more than a few hypocrits in church or pseudo-Christian flakes like Jack T. Chick to convince me that there is NOT order, design, and purpose in the universe, or to disregard a historical figure as daunting as Jesus Christ. (After all, is Jack T. Chick or Bob Jones any flakier than the people in the Philippines who nail themselves on crosses, the Hindus who hang themselves from hooks in their backs, or the Catholics who travel to Fatima and think their fillings turn gold? On the whole, fundamentalist Protestants are much more sane and rational than enthusiasts in other religions - if you don't agree with me, ask yourself who you'd rather hang out with for a day.) That said, I agree wholeheartedly with Tim's take on these books. The storyline and most of the characters are serviceably written - I'll even grant that they're better than a lot of the crap being written by contract writers for major publishers. But these books are more interested in preaching than in story-telling. I find it especially annoying that Jenkins and LaHaye are so unswerveringly arrogant to state that their idea of how the world will end is fact, not speculation. These books peddle John Nelson Darby's oddball interpretation of Revelation as the doctrinaire TRUTH of how the apocalypse will occur. The least they could have done is point out in a preface that they are painting a highly speculative portrait, and that many other valid interpretations exist, instead of including a triumphalist quote from apocalyptic crackpot John Walvoord that "the main features of this book aren't fiction." It should also be noted that Tim LaHaye really has very little to do with these books; at best, he should be mentioned in a "special thanks" section. Jenkins and Tyndale publishers are deliberately misrepresenting the authorship of these books to sell more of them.
Rating:
Summary: This is what I was looking for!
Review: I have enjoyed this series so much that when ever the subject of christ or religion comes up I have to mention this series. The first of the series "Left Behind" was given to me by a friend with the understanding that I had to buy the rest on my own. I have since bought a number of the first book "Left Behind" to give out to friends in hope that they will be inspired to find GOD and pass on the joy of this book and the series to others. THIS A GREAT BOOK THAT IS VERY HARD TO PUT DOWN..................
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