Customer Reviews: Read 12 more reviews...
 "The time of the end is the time of no place to go..." December 2, 2008
My fellow Protestants would do well to read the novels of Michael O'Brien, a gifted writer of literary fiction with a Christian worldview. The special effects-laden "Left Behind" series focused so much on the signs in the heavens accompanying the advent of the Antichrist, that we have overlooked the signs on earth, and the biblical warning that "many antichrists have arisen". O'Brien's "Children of the Last Days", while having to contend with the coming of the one Antichrist, also must deal with the "many" antichrists - the social and spiritual decline of the nations - that have paved the way for his rule.
"The Lord of the Rings" becomes a backdrop to "Plague Journal", and like that story, this novel follows a small band of travelers on a seemingly impossible mission to make their way through the darkness of their time without being overwhelmed by it. It's not essential to have read "Father Elijah" and "Strangers and Sojourners" first, but reading those two massive tomes is still time well spent.
 Plague Journal March 19, 2008
Michael D. O'Brien is a masterful storyteller. He has compiled a stunning series, Children of the Last Days, of which Plague Journal is the second. I am now just beyond half way through Eclipse of the Sun, the third. I have two more to go, and by then perhaps he will have written some more. While I'm reviewing his work, I'd like to applaud his latest work : Island of the World. That was a "watershed" book for me.There are not words to convey the power and authority which which he strings words together. It is compelling fiction. Any one choosing to read Michael D. O'Brien's work will be in for a major treat as well as learning experience.
More bang for the buck than "Left Behind" July 30, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
O'Brien's "Children of the Last Days" series shows what the apocalypse might be like through Catholic eyes. "Plague Journal" shows what an average man would go through when he sees the very land he loves slowly but surely choke off all joy and life in the name of an efficient government. The main character's actions and thoughts make you slow down and wonder what you'd do. Also, not all the characters automatically do the right thing. Each of their actions has a consequence, whether good or bad, and they have to put up with those consequences, which is more realistic. There's no flashy deux ex machina, but God works through the characters in a way that's somehow more majestic than simply suspending laws of nature to make sure the good guy wins. I highly recommend this book no matter what religion you follow. You will laugh, cry, and think.
 "Left Behind" for the conservative Catholic set June 10, 2006
2 out of 15 found this review helpful
Imaginative fiction has an unfortunate tendency to be left behind by events. (Can anyone now read Edward Bellamy's "Looking Backward, 2000-1887" without a giggle?) Circa-1990's paranoid fantasies about blue-helmeted UN troops descending in black helicopters to confiscate householder's lawn jockeys were abruptly made obsolete by the events of September 11, 2001. Some people have yet to get the word however. In such minds as these, the Threat to Civilization resides in the usual suspects: leftist sociology professors, feminists (Can anyone name a single present day feminist leader now that Betty Friedan is dead and Gloria Steinem long since retired?), those dreadful "gays"; and so on, and so forth.
It would be nice to think that the audience for this sort of Christian kitsch is limited to goofballs barricaded in a log cabin in Idaho (or Northern Ontario), with their gun collection; unfortunately the incredible success of the 12-book "Left Behind" series militates against such comforting thoughts. It was probably inevitable that a Catholic writer would try their hand at this sort of thing, and so we have Michael D. O'Brien's "Children of the Last Days" series.
Needless to say, as a Roman Catholic, Mr. O' Brien writes with considerably more polish than his benighted Protestant brethren; he also seems to have mastered the knack of creating characters who have somewhat more depth than paper dolls. Since the author is not shackled by the constraints of biblical literalism, he can also dispense with bizarre and off-putting fixtures from the Book of Revelations, such as giant six-winged brazen locusts whose stings kill. Even granting the above points in their favor, the books hew with amazing precision to the formula laid down previously by such writers as Frank Peretti and Tim LaHaye. In the first book of the series, "Father Elijah" a Jewish Holocaust survivor turned Catholic priest is dispatched on a perilous secret mission by the Vatican. This is nothing less than to make contact with the Anti-Christ to dissuade him from his evil plan. At the risk of spoiling things, it will be noted here that this infernal personage turns out not to be Nicolae Carpathia, Secretary-General of the U.N., but the President. President of what is not made clear; considering that this first book was published during the Clinton administration, faithful Christian readers should have no need of having the answer spelled out for them. (All good Christians know that Bill Clinton is the beast with seven heads and ten horns described in Revelations 13.) As with similar-themed books, there is at least one token Jewish `good guy', presumably to ward off accusations of anti-Semitism. While Mr. O'Brien has the good taste not to mention what lies in store for Jews who won't convert to Catholicism, such Fathers of the Church as Saint John Chrysostom more than make up for this deficiency. (Hint: Jews should pack enough asbestos underwear to last for a long trip.)
Subsequent books in the series take the form of `prequels' and sequels, with settings extending from, roughly, the Paleolithic age (Note to reader: pace, this is meant ironically) to the near future. In the novels set in contemporaneous times such as "Eclipse of the Sun" and "Plague Journal", the by- now tiresome tropes of religious fiction all appear. The "soft" totalitarian state that persecutes Christians. (Holy Herbert Marcuse! Christians in North America who whine about "persecution" ought to be shipped-via one-way ticket perhaps-to the Sudan, or be forced to read the collected works of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 10,000 times.) Noble Christian parents, who stand in danger of having their children snatched from them because they are insufficiently `politically correct'. (In case anyone has been living under a rock; it is now conservatism that has degenerated into a bundle of contradictory `correct' opinions, all bound together as tightly as the rods of a Roman fascis.) "Feminists", an epithet usually used by conservatives to mean any woman not a doormat, are portrayed practically as evil succubi; the fons et origo of the Universe's every ill. (The almost-palpable sexual insecurity and ugly misogyny on display are at once pathetic and contemptible.) Evil sodomites are presented in time-honored fashion as dissolute and sad; that is, when not plotting to destroy civilization. These being Catholic novels, they are treated with the sort of elaborate condescension bestowed upon retarded children, rather than the usual fire-and-brimstone rants. Top it all off with Tom Clancy-style action and adventure, and voila! There you have it. Where are Graham Greene, Flannery O'Connor, and Georges Bernanos when you really need them?
This commentary may seem like breaking a butterfly on the wheel. It is not. During the mid-1980's the publishers of this book produced and distributed a truly tenebrous and evil book, "The AIDS Cover-Up?" This vile book aimed to terrorize with predictions that AIDS would kill tens of millions of Americans within a decade. To forestall such a cataclysm, it advised that all gays-much less anyone found to be HIV-positive through mandatory testing--be rounded-up and forcibly interned in concentration camps. According to conservative science writer Michael Fumento (who by his own account lost his job in the Reagan administration for objecting to the book--and the morals of those touting it), copies of it could be seen on desks all over official Washington in those days. None of the horrors either predicted or recommended by the book came to pass, but it was a near thing. The moral of the story? Ideas, even the most vicious or worthless, have consequences. At a time when fantasy and reality are becoming blurred in many minds, books such as Mr. O'Brien's cannot be excused merely because they are classed under "Fiction". People who gabble about the `End Times' in this fashion are (to use a formulation of Orwell's) like those who play with fire who seemingly don't realize that fire is hot and can burn. If your opponents are not merely mistaken or even just wrong, but concious servants of the devil.... Well, there are plenty of deluded souls out there who may decide to suit actions to words.
This series of books (and similar ones by other authors) share a rare distinction: they get it completely upside down. Instead of being threatened by "the dictatorship of relativism", it turns out that what really threatens peace, human rights, and democracy is what might be called `the dictatorship of certainty'. In the United States under the presidency of a man gripped by the unshakable delusion that God's will is his will and vice-versa , we now see rank obscenities such routine and officially-sanctioned torture, cover-ups of massacres, indefinite detention of American citizens and others neither charged nor convicted of any crime, and declarations by the U.S. Attorney General--the nation's highest law-enforcement official--that the President will only obey such laws as he wishes to. Not even Presidents Lincoln during the Civil War, Wilson during World War I, or Franklin Roosevelt during World War II did anything like this. Meanwhile, in Iraq, the Balkans, sub-Saharan Africa and sundry other places; nauseating slaughters go on almost daily, inspired by... feminism? No, religion, Christianity very definitely included. In places like Uganda, a syncretist group, the "Lord's Resistance Army" terrorizes the north of the country with atrocities so vile they would cause Khmer Rouge cadres to double over and vomit. Even the suave and cadaverous Benedict XVI suddenly seems to be finding democracy perhaps worth supporting after all, and is edging away from his predecessor's policy of discreetly playing footsie with Islamist governments.
Catholicism, more than any other Christian denomination in the U.S. has the poor as its concern, at least if you believe the words. In actuality it has joined Protestant fundamentalism in collapsing morality down to the private, principally sexual realm. In this scheme of things, robbing the widow of their pension and the orphan of their Social Security is, of course, small fault or none. Instead of showing how they are not like other men, the popularity of books such as the "Children of the Last Days" series show that some Catholics who preen themselves on their bearing witness to a corrupt culture only reflect that corruption as faithfully as a mirror--the image is reversed, but every detail is the same.
Don't believe everything you hear April 8, 2005
8 out of 9 found this review helpful
As I'm sure most reviewers have said, be sure you read Strangers and Sojourners first; PJ is the second in the series. Also, it is good to read Father Elijah too; it occurs about the same time as PJ.
I read PJ in a week. It is one of the most moving books I've read, but I was reluctant to heed its message in the beginning. In this world of half-truths and deceptions where everyone is a partially educated philosopher and politician, PJ really does show the need to not believe everything we heard or read.
Should we be constantly paranoid? Not really. But a healthy skepticism is necessary.
|
