Babylon Rising by Tim LaHaye, Greg Dinallo
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Book Reviews of Babylon Rising
Book Review: Silly...
Summary: 2 Stars
I bought this book after hearing all the great things about the Left Behind series (which I have not read). I am fascinated by Biblical archaeology, and thought this would be a great read.
My mistake. Lahaye is trying much, much too hard write Indiana Jones. The characters are flat, and I didn't care about Murphy right from the start. He was just not engaging. The plotlines are implausible yes, but I don't view that as a fault in and of itself - that kind of implausibility, in a plucky, believable, FUN character is a joy to read. In Murphy's case, I couldn't have cared less whether LaHaye killed him off and gave his long-suffering wife a break.
The enjoyable part about characters like Indiana Jones is that the reader understands that it's all in good fun. This book contains the same type of events and situations, but without any of the tongue-in-cheek insanity. Instead, LaHaye tries deperately to force us to believe that things like that actually happen.
For example - in one scene, Murphy's wife is startled by something in a small cave, stumbles backward, and manages to fall directly into a narrow, vertical crevice that neither of them had noticed before. Sound familiar?! It's Dr. Jones all over again.
My main mistake was buying this book along with the sequel assuming that I would love it.
Book Review: Uh...really slow...and the only interesting character dies early
Summary: 2 Stars
I have read many LaHaye Books. This is the second worst (behind "Are We Living In the End Times?). Jerry Jenkins needs to be present to make LaHAye's characters gain a third dimension. This book should have taken 2-3 days to read. It took two weeks because it never became a page-turner. Murphy was the greatest archaeologist evr, in the fact that he could solve 5,000 year old mysteries on the first try every time. He was a dead-eye with a bow and arrow (lame), and only WOUNDS A BIRD, but leaves the man who killed his wife and ruined his life unharmed. Would it have killed Murphy to at least graze the guy?
The whole premise of the book was to get 3 parts of a Biblical Bronze Serpent put back together to feel it's power/wrath. 15 pages from the end, the authors say, "umm we can make this work so we'll switch to some giant solid gold head that Murphy and a bunch of marines find in about 20 minutes."
I have the next book, and it will pass to the next person unread.
Book Review: Almost so bad it's good.
Summary: 2 Stars
Ok. I've removed my previous one star review after re-reading the book (my first "reading" was listening to the audiobook).
I still think the story (involving an Illuminati-type group launching a conspiracy against evangelical Christians, and an assassin who murders people with falcons trained to attack and kill people) is ludicrous, the characters silly and the dialogue laughable. But I've got to admit that these... "qualities" actually make the book rather amusing, in a "so bad it's good" kind of way.
It's common knowledge that Tim LaHaye doesn't do any actual writing on any of "his" novels, and this time he's found another hack co-writer in Greg Dinallo.
Anybody looking for a good adventure novel should look elsewhere. But those looking for an example of brainless Christian fiction at its worst may find "Babylon Rising" amusing, although it does contain some rather slow sequences.
Book Review: Stock, Not Special
Summary: 1 Stars
Reading more like a first draft of a cable-TV movie, authors Tim LaHaye and Greg Dinallo pen an incredibly disjointed thriller which features an implausible plot and incredibly wooden characters.
The main character - Biblical prophecy scholar Michael Murphy - may not be the typical super-hero that plagues the action genre, but his world tour while escaping the clutches of evil is comical at best. The settings could be anywhere - from Dubai to Dubuque - and fails to provide any solid background material to give the reader any sense of substance. In one scene, he seemingly just plops into a hole in the ground and - with the help of his wife - quickly finds an ancient artifact.
It is also a huge stretch the way the action is propelled by a shadowy group of thugs bent on world domination, an ice-cold killer and a media mogul who lacks any morals. The linkage of the domestic "terror" reaped upon the nation by these folks is somehow tied into a vast conspiracy against Evangelical Christianity, which is a ridiculous thread within the main plot.
The most believable scenes are Murphy's class lectures, though his sniping about an antagonist within the college hierarchy is an unprofessional stunt that takes away from the message the authors are attempting to convey. Yes, in this case, it is wise to attend the lectures, but get friends together for a football game on the quad for the rest of this dud.
Book Review: They are coming to get you
Summary: 1 Stars
Before encountering this book, I was unaware of Tim Lahaye and selected this book to read because, being Christian oriented, I felt sure that I would not be bombarded with the trash and foul language so prevalent in the paperback mystery trade today.
As a novel, this is a very poorly written book. The characters are weakly developed, the events are contrived, and the so-called "archeology" is absurd at best. The main plot of the book is that an international "Illuminati" type conspiracy has targeted evangelical Christians for serious persecution and ultimate destruction. The way this idea is presented, you may began to believe that the author is trying to scare evangelical Christians into a paranoid view of the world. It struck me so, and I looked Lahaye up, and it appears that he does believe that there are a large number of conspiring organizations against his brand of Christianity. Indeed, the story, characters and plot are do poorly constructed, that one is left only with the author's preaching of his own version of Christianity and his own paranoid fears that the world is out to get him and his church.