The Remnant by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B Jenkins

With many wanted people gathered in the desert fortress of Petra, Supreme Potentate Nicolae Carpathia launched a full-scale missile attack against it to once and for all vanquish his enemies. Unfortunately, things did not go as he planned. After the bombs fell on the people in Petra, they were seen walking around in the fire unharmed by the flames. When it becomes clear that he cannot destroy his enemies, he turns his attention to a more pressing matter-the oceans have turned into complete blood, and people all around the world are thirsty. Meanwhile, Chloe Williams, Hannah Palemoon, and Mac McCullum pose, with the inside help of Chang Wong, as GC Peacekeepers in Greece in order to spring their friend, George Sebastian, from captivity there. But when their covers are blown by experts in New Babylon, they are forced to escape with their very lives.

The Remnant

covers more ground in the Great Tribulation than I can explain in my summary, mostly because it skips through time once the book nears an end. A large majority of the book is an extreme waste of time, spent mostly on the Greece rescue mission. Since this is the most useless book of the series, The Remnant is the worst book of the Left Behind series.

Buck really hangs up his cape in this book and becomes a stay-at-home dad while his wife becomes the world-traveling superhero he was. Rayford becomes a go-to character whenever the authors have an extra Co-op mission to demonstrate. I never understood why Mac was introduced; I have always seen him as a useless character. Ming Toy is also a useless character, yet she has an entire sidebar plot devoted to a random mission of hers. George Sebastian has been made into an important character by the sudden urgency of the rescue mission this book focuses on. Basically, the character department was gone from one extreme to the other throughout this precarious series, especially since the series is driven by plot and action.

After the Petra miracles, the authors spend way too much time elaborating over the Greece rescue mission. Chang does his usual magic and makes the aliases of Chloe, Mac, and Hannah look real for a time while they rescue the great George Sebastian. After spending much time and drama on this portion of the book, the authors throw the plot into time warp, stopping at random and sometimes useless points in time, such as when they demonstrated Rayford preforming a Co-op mission to exchange water for wheat. Then the authors stop off at the sun bowl judgement to show off what they've come up with before speeding ahead to the darkness bowl judgement. All this time warping was only necessary because the authors spent way too much time on Sebastian's rescue mission. The saddest things of all about this book is that, were it deleted from the series, nothing would be missed, save for the sun judgement, which could have been moved. This makes this book the lowest point of the series.

With so little time left in the series, the authors do not need to be playing around with rescue missions anymore. It's time to step things up, now that there are only two more books in the series. I expect better things than this.

2 stars