Ok, so we're back with Book 3 in Tim LaHaye and Jerry B Jenkins's Left Behind series, Nicolae.
After two books of what mostly consisted of setting up Armageddon, we finally start getting payoffs as the Horsemen ride. Oh look, the United Nations (now Global Community) is using its 10% of all arms on Earth to bomb major cities! Oh look, Bruce is actually dead!
Let's see, Carpathia, the Antichrist, has moved the GC to New Babylon somewhere in Iran. His new plane, flown by Rayford, has a special gadget that lets Rayford listen in to conversations in the back while he's flying. Buck winds up in Israel to sneak Tsion Ben-Judah out since two factions want him dead. Oh yes, and after the major story lines are resolved and Buck's magazine predicts the "Wrath of the Lamb" Earthquake when the 6th seal is broken, we get a world wide Earthquake that removes the global population down to roughly 75% of the population pre-Rapture. Ben-Judah is living in the fallout shelter under New Hope Baptist. Buck, who survived the quake in a Range Rover is trying to find Chloe and Ben-Judah in the wreckage. Hattie has more or less vanished, having spent most of the book being a strawman of why it's not OK to abort the Antichrist's baby. And Rayford is in the air with Carpathia when the quake hits, so he's fine.
Ok, so, none of the major core characters dies until towards the end, and they all come back for the finale, so we're not worried about any of them at this point, nor are we particularly worried about them anyway, since they remain flat characters, acting as cyphers to relate the beliefs and arguments of the authors.
Like I said, there's literally a few chapters devoted to arguments against abortion, that later get roped in to how abortion leads to Eugenics. There's the big reveal that Buck's personal nemesis is a lesbian, which gets thrown in with the whole "Fidelity in Marriage, chastity in singleness" argument that was viewed as a compromise in the 90's. (I'd say I wonder if that argument changed at all when Same Sex marriage became a thing, but I'm pretty sure legalizing marriage more or less threw off the veneer of that argument, revealing again the absolute repulsion certain people have towards non cishet relationships.)
Oh yes, we get more about how Militias, even prophesied to fail against the Antichrist, are a good thing, about how one should invest in gold, because one we get to one world currency, Christians will not be able to use it because it requires the Mark of the Beast... (Deeper you go down the hole, the more the commercials on Faux News make sense.) About the only argument they present that I halfway agree with once you separate it from the Abortion leads to Eugenics and thought control by a strong man, is the one they make about Free Speech as the GC creates the Morale Monitors (secret thought police, and I might add I think they're using the wrong word, since in context, it really should be Moral) to start silencing dissenting voices. Yeah, I tend to believe people should be allowed to speak their mind, and I frankly could give two shits about Evangelists praying me into hell. (I grew up in an era when Brother Jed would come preach on the Quad at Wright State, and the shit the Westboro Baptist did and still do.)I still fight with myself about how responsible one is for what actions one's words inspire. The problem here is that instead of actually exploring the argument, we instead get "The bad people are trying to silence the Christians!" because there is no gray area in these books.
Honestly, while the writing is slowly getting less wooden, it doesn't change the fact that every character in here feels like they're marionettes dancing on strings while lipsyncing to a recorded message.
As a side note, since it is October, I'm switching out of series reads to start having fun with one shot horror novels in my collection for a bit.
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