Left Behind

A Novel of the Earth's Last Days

By: Tim LaHaye, Jerry B. Jenkins

Narrated by: Richard Ferrone

Length: 11 hrs and 49 mins

Publisher's summary

What would happen if millions of people around the world suddenly disappeared one day? In this fascinating apocalyptic thriller, best-selling Christian inspirational authors LaHaye and Jenkins pool their considerable talents to answer that question. Narrator Richard Ferrone's unusually deep and hypnotic voice will keep you right in the middle of this not-unimaginable end of the world nightmare.

Pilot Rayford Steele is contemplating adultery with a young flight attendant when over 100 of his passengers simply vanish, leaving vacated clothes and bewildered companions. Rayford and the others left behind must deal with mass chaos on top of personal loss. Among the passengers still left is star reporter Cameron "Buck" Williams, who just got the assignment of a lifetime: find out what happened and why. Theories abound, from Christian Rapture to alien abduction. Buck suspects secret meetings between international power brokers are somehow connected. And rising political icon Nicolae Carpathia seems to be at the center of it all.

Browse the entire Left Behind series.

©1995 by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins (P)1998 Recorded Books, LLC

Great series!

OK - I normally read / listen to fantasy and science fiction. In fact, when I started listening to this series I was listening to Stephen King's The Dark Tower series and waiting for the Song of Susannah.

What an excellent surprise this was. I was pointed to this series by a friend and was at first skeptical, but gave it a try anyway just to see what it was like. The more I listened, the more excited I was to hear more. I am now five books into it and can't wait to get to the next one.

Even if you are not religious, you will enjoy this book and this series. It is well written, the characters are well developed, and the plot is great.

Pluses for the Christian reader - learn more about the prophecies of the end-times, jewish beliefs, and portions of scripture. Explore your relationship with Christ while hearing about what the characters are going through.

All around, a very very satisfying listen / read for me and I highly recommend it. Don't be scared off by the religious content if you are hesitant about that. And if you are attracted to the series because of the religious ties, you won't be disappointed, either.

Please Read

I was seriously disappointed in this book.

I was aware that this book and the series was a best-seller, but that was about all I knew prior to listening. This book is for those readers who attend church more than once a week, and who try to “save” all of their friends. I was hoping for a book about the end of the world. What I found was a predictable storyline that was bordering on arrogant, militant Christian propaganda.

One of the main characters spent much of the book feeling guilty about impure thoughts regarding another woman while he was married. I’m not sure why his guilt was discussed at three different times in the book. He never acted on these thoughts and frankly I am not sure that he should feel that guilty.

I am not alone. My wife, who attends church and bible study, also tried to read the book and stopped before she was half way through.

If you want to see an excellent movie involving militant Christian Propaganda I strongly recommend “Kingdom of Heaven” but I would not recommend this book.

Love/Hate this series

This series drove me nuts!! There are so many things that were simply aweful, yet I downloaded the entire series in less than three months. Let me be fair and first say what I liked about the books.

I found many inspirational moments that made me contemplate and deepen my faith. That's the biggest draw. I don't fully agree with the author's interpretations, but the entire journey of the books made me examine where my heart was, and I found many moments of deepening closeness with God. Also, in the early books, they were good at hooking you and making you want to know what happened next.

Now ... why they drove me crazy. They are terribly written. There are logical gaps throughout the series. There are too many to mention, but suffice it to say the factual or physical circumstances laid out in the first books are caste aside as people and things that could not happen according to the first books continue to appear in the latter. And it isn't because God made it happen. They just do.

The authors are misogynistic. Particularly in the early books, there is not an intelligent, well-rounded female character to be found. The women are shallow and flighty, and respond to all circumstances in a stereotypic fashion only very young men would think realistic. This improves over the series, but I never see myself in any of the female characters.

The narrator drives me nuts. He needs to listen to his earlier narrations and make up his mind. Throughout the books, his accents for different characters is all over the place. One day, a character sounds like an American midwesterner, the next day, Dracula in a bad Ed Woods movie. The pronunciation of names and cities also changes from book to book.

Like all successful authors, the editor must have lost heart. If these were written books, you'd skip whole chapters, but you can't glance at an audio book, so your stuck listening to it all.

They were worthwhile, but could have been so much better.

Makes you think

In general christians unconciously (or not) tend to imagine some of the less than pleasant scenes (future or past) in the bible not actually taking place being. This book makes an effort to present one possible interpretation of the end times as a real life situation and has you think how would you deal with it. This is obviously a challenge for the authors but they do a pretty good job.

Whether the actual interpretation is correct (pre-trib / post-trib etc) is probably less important than :

1. It makes you think about the whole issue
2. It is a good clean adventure story
3. It will likely leave you wondering what will happend next (and ready to buy the next one in the series).

It is the first christian tradition based fiction I have read and I certainly enjoyed it.

Probably the best part of the book is its attempt to describe in some way what it might be like to find parts of your family disappeared in the rapture and you were "left behind".

No particular complaints about the narration.

Awesome

I had read this entire series, but enjoyed the audio version even more. Excellent narration. This series is knowledgeble and backed by the scriptures. A must read by christians and an encouraged read to all!

Great Story but Horrible Narration

I read through this series book right after book when it first came out. I gave a friend a copy of the first book and he got hooked. I wanted to listen through the series to get that nostalgic feel but the narrator is awful. Everyone sounds pretty much the same. He took an exciting book and made it as dull as a professor’s speech from Paint Drying 101.

Unimaginative speculative fiction

In the grand tradition of speculative fiction, "Left Behind" takes a concept and carries it out to ridiculous extremes. For a sci-fi and fantasy reader such as myself, the premise of the Rapture taking place is no more ridiculous than assumptions such as there being a parallel world filled with magic (such as Piers Anthony's "Split Infinity"), or that organ transplants will extend human life infinitely (as in Larry Niven's "The Jigsaw Man").

Unfortunately the religious fervor of the author overwhelms what could have been a great novel, displaying itself either as naivete or ignorance as to why those exposed to the Gosepel and Christianity would ever *not* be instantly converted. It provided little insight to the point of view of born again Christians, instead displaying them post-conversion as one-dimensional characters remaining willfully ignorant to alternate opinions. Pre-conversion characters have much more depth to them, but are portrayed as being stupid, having low willpower, being extremely credulous of ridiculous explanations, or stuck up. The treatment of one of the main characters pre-conversion is a sad case of anti-intellectualism as she slowly descends from a lofty condescending intellectual position to a college dropout and convert meekly taking on her father's mantle of evangelism.

I expect born again / evangelical Christians will enjoy this novel for apparently showing how everyone can be converted with the right impetus, but for the rest of us, you can take it or leave it.

Had me from start to finish

Where does Left Behind rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Around the top. It is a topic close to my heart.

What did you like best about this story?

The performance was excellent! Thestory was complete.

Which scene was your favorite?

Hard to say. I guess when Rayford accepted Christ.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Yes. And I did.....

Any additional comments?

Went right away to the next book.

Just outstanding...

Loved it I couldn't put it down! My only problem was understanding some of what certain characters said because of thick accents. But it was done well and made me feel like I was there!

Interesting and thought provoking, but slow

The premise is excellent and the subject matter is interesting but it was just too long and drawn out. The story alternates between two protagonists, Ray and Buck. They are both great. There are also other interesting characters - some good and some truly evil. When millions of people disappeared all over the world, Ray and Buck are among the ones that were left behind. They want to get to the bottom of why this happened. It was God's act. The people who disappeared were taken to heaven in the Rapture. The anti Christ is arising. It is a perilous time. Ray and Buck are saved by the grace of God and shepherded by Bruce, who was also left behind because he had not been a true Christian. Now Bruce is dedicated to helping the others left behind to find God and fight through the times of trials and tribulations that follow the Rapture. Bruce wants others to be saved so that they may join their loved ones in heaven when they die, or when the Lord returns again in seven years. I hope they live long enough to see the Lord. The book really made me think about my life as a Christian and made me want to be a better person.. That is a good thing.