BTW, I wanted to let all my faithful readers know that I have already landed a job interview (I am so stoked!), so those of you out there who pray, please pray for my strength and security, and that I will have favor.
On with my analysis of the Left Behind series!
Soul Harvest
Definitely one of the strongest of the Left Behind novels, Soul Harvest contains gritty, three-dimensional character development, snappy dialogue, and a pace that leaves the reader hungry for more. The dark side gets darker, the evil "GC" gets more brutal (check out Carpathia's revenge plan against Hattie Durham--damn!), and the "good guys" find it increasingly hard to maintain any semblance of freedom. Worse, Rayford is confronted with a personal setback that costs his faith dearly--his is the most emotionally "taut" portion of the story, although Cameron's search for his wife is no less so.
Prepare for realistic plot development (thank God) and realistic character behavior. Our "heroes" do not turn out to be as emotionally resourceful as they'd planned, especially with God's war of words (and actions) with antichrist heating up--and Hattie Durham makes some surprising moves in a positive emotional direction.
Apollyon
Aside from the (shockingly bad) premise that the masses of the world can only be "reached" through a Billy Graham-style evangelistic crusade, this novel has a lot going for it. :) (Oh, and Hattie Durham's sudden "I want to be a global assassin" kick--what the hell???)
Overall, character development sucks in this novel--our "heroes" become two-dimensional, our "villains" become two-dimensional, and even God doesn't seem to have a very three-dimensional presence, beyond casually raining destruction after destruction on the Earth. The horror of the locusts from Revelation 9 is quite graphic--and provides one of the two sources of real character development in the book (dear God, as if Hattie Durham weren't enduring the floodgates of hell opening up on her life already!). The other source is, of course, the death of Ken Ritz, which is very adroitly handled by LaHaye and Jenkins--in its wake, we see the main characters facing and dealing with the intrepid complexities of life (for example, Cameron finding comfort from the men who subsequently burn two soldiers to death with fire from their mouths). For the first time, we see the "good guys" dealing with the immediacy (and potential brutality) of death at the hands of their enemies, and it is quite a sobering moment for them.
The change that occurs in Rayford, beginning from the end of the previous novel, continues--and provides one of the most compelling elements of the story.
Assassins
I'm not a big fan of novels with random, roving points of view--and this one is no exception. Carpathia dies . . . who cares? No one knows who killed him . . . so what? And Mac and David Hassid are running an underground operation (or 10) behind closed doors at Carpathia's new palace . . . should we care?
This novel contains so much gunplay, random assassination attempts, and even more random violence that I left the book wondering not "who killed Nicolae" but "what the hell just happened?!" The only person whose death seems anywhere near appropriately handled is Floyd Charles, the refugees' resident medical expert (Cameron's reaction in the car is priceless--"WHAT?!"). However, the other characters' deaths (or near misses) are rather slipshod--Dwayne and Trudy struck me as tragic losses, but only because they were innocents dragged into a deadly situation, not because they had achieved any depth as three-dimensional characters. The GC officers who die at the hands of the horsemen of Revelation 9, the disloyal GC subordinate whose family is assassinated, and (of course) the bane of our "heroes"' existence, Pope Peter the Second, are simply getting what they (richly) deserve.
Moreover, LaHaye's interpretation of the latter half of Revelation 9 seems rather odd to me--where does he get that the horsemen described in this passage kill only those who have not repented of their sin? (From what I see, it says only that they kill a third of mankind--seems pretty indiscriminate to me.) On top of that, they break their own rules with the "collateral" death of Jonas, which is, in my opinion, a rather clumsy way to get Chaim to reconsider his movement toward faith.
By novel's end, I was more glad Nicolae died than anything else. (Oh yeah, he's supposed to come back from the dead in the next book. Yippee . . . )
Oh, and isn't it hilarious how Nicolae's prayer to Satan is so "shocking" and "offensive" (or presumably should be to the Christian reader)? I hate to burst your bubble out there, Left Behind fans, but when I was a self-styled Satanist, I prayed prayers like that all the time. (And so did, and do, many other self-styled Satanists as well.)
(analysis to be continued)
On with my analysis of the Left Behind series!
Soul Harvest
Definitely one of the strongest of the Left Behind novels, Soul Harvest contains gritty, three-dimensional character development, snappy dialogue, and a pace that leaves the reader hungry for more. The dark side gets darker, the evil "GC" gets more brutal (check out Carpathia's revenge plan against Hattie Durham--damn!), and the "good guys" find it increasingly hard to maintain any semblance of freedom. Worse, Rayford is confronted with a personal setback that costs his faith dearly--his is the most emotionally "taut" portion of the story, although Cameron's search for his wife is no less so.
Prepare for realistic plot development (thank God) and realistic character behavior. Our "heroes" do not turn out to be as emotionally resourceful as they'd planned, especially with God's war of words (and actions) with antichrist heating up--and Hattie Durham makes some surprising moves in a positive emotional direction.
Apollyon
Aside from the (shockingly bad) premise that the masses of the world can only be "reached" through a Billy Graham-style evangelistic crusade, this novel has a lot going for it. :) (Oh, and Hattie Durham's sudden "I want to be a global assassin" kick--what the hell???)
Overall, character development sucks in this novel--our "heroes" become two-dimensional, our "villains" become two-dimensional, and even God doesn't seem to have a very three-dimensional presence, beyond casually raining destruction after destruction on the Earth. The horror of the locusts from Revelation 9 is quite graphic--and provides one of the two sources of real character development in the book (dear God, as if Hattie Durham weren't enduring the floodgates of hell opening up on her life already!). The other source is, of course, the death of Ken Ritz, which is very adroitly handled by LaHaye and Jenkins--in its wake, we see the main characters facing and dealing with the intrepid complexities of life (for example, Cameron finding comfort from the men who subsequently burn two soldiers to death with fire from their mouths). For the first time, we see the "good guys" dealing with the immediacy (and potential brutality) of death at the hands of their enemies, and it is quite a sobering moment for them.
The change that occurs in Rayford, beginning from the end of the previous novel, continues--and provides one of the most compelling elements of the story.
Assassins
I'm not a big fan of novels with random, roving points of view--and this one is no exception. Carpathia dies . . . who cares? No one knows who killed him . . . so what? And Mac and David Hassid are running an underground operation (or 10) behind closed doors at Carpathia's new palace . . . should we care?
This novel contains so much gunplay, random assassination attempts, and even more random violence that I left the book wondering not "who killed Nicolae" but "what the hell just happened?!" The only person whose death seems anywhere near appropriately handled is Floyd Charles, the refugees' resident medical expert (Cameron's reaction in the car is priceless--"WHAT?!"). However, the other characters' deaths (or near misses) are rather slipshod--Dwayne and Trudy struck me as tragic losses, but only because they were innocents dragged into a deadly situation, not because they had achieved any depth as three-dimensional characters. The GC officers who die at the hands of the horsemen of Revelation 9, the disloyal GC subordinate whose family is assassinated, and (of course) the bane of our "heroes"' existence, Pope Peter the Second, are simply getting what they (richly) deserve.
Moreover, LaHaye's interpretation of the latter half of Revelation 9 seems rather odd to me--where does he get that the horsemen described in this passage kill only those who have not repented of their sin? (From what I see, it says only that they kill a third of mankind--seems pretty indiscriminate to me.) On top of that, they break their own rules with the "collateral" death of Jonas, which is, in my opinion, a rather clumsy way to get Chaim to reconsider his movement toward faith.
By novel's end, I was more glad Nicolae died than anything else. (Oh yeah, he's supposed to come back from the dead in the next book. Yippee . . . )
Oh, and isn't it hilarious how Nicolae's prayer to Satan is so "shocking" and "offensive" (or presumably should be to the Christian reader)? I hate to burst your bubble out there, Left Behind fans, but when I was a self-styled Satanist, I prayed prayers like that all the time. (And so did, and do, many other self-styled Satanists as well.)
(analysis to be continued)
posted by Brian Bly at 12:00 PM
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