Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I am a fan of J. W. Rawles and an avid reader of Survival Blog. I've even had a number of articles published on the site so I do follow his work daily. I was looking forward to "Founders" even though I had been disappointed by "Survivors". Rats, Rawles let me down again. This one was worse than "Survivor". On his website regarding reviews of "Founders" he states, "key criticism seems to be my references to Christianity. I'm not ashamed to be a Christian, and both my blog and my books are opportunities to share the Gospel and to demonstrate how Christians live by faith. I make no apology for that. If the ratings for my books suffer because of this, so be it. I'm not watering down my message, just for the sake of popularity." OK, I'm totally good with Christians working in their views and beliefs into their novels but Rawles goes tooo far. Founders should probably be better classified under "Christianity or Military" category. I was looking for a post-apocalypse story not a sermon. My frustration is that I don't feel his pre-release description of the book fits with the actual book. If he had described it as being heavily religious or lots of military jargon, I could accept it. I have read a good number of Christian writers that publish post-apocalype books and have enjoyed them. Thomas Sherry's "Deep Winter" and Terri Blackstock's "Last Light" are good examples of how you can be a Christian writer and still tell a good story. I have to agree with the reviewers who stated they wound up getting really irritated with the strong religious beliefs being forced down your throat. I too wound up skipping large parts of each chapter when Rawles started in on the religious stuff. I did not buy the book for that and he did not advertised it as one long teaching moment for his beliefs. It's kinda funny that one of the long boring diatribes he does is about the missle base in Montana. The character is bored and frustrated with the endless "retraining sessions or refamiliarization classes" on the systems that he is forced to sit through. Character said something like 20 minutes of information crammed into hours of lectures. Well that sums up "Founders". Twenty minutes of good stuff crammed into 288 pages. I've read lots of books by former military personnel and they all do have a tendency to get very technical and long winded in this aspect. But again, I would have to say Rawles goes way toooo far. Mindless boring stuff that does not relate to the actual story itself. I can handle long descriptions of the military stuff if it is important to the story line but this was not the case. It seemed like he had all this information that he just wanted to impart on the reader regardless of whether or not it related or was neccessary for the story line. I've read 100+ post-apocalypse books written that are out there but this one is far the absolute worse. I would steer people towards the above mentioned books as well as, Lights Out, Matthew Bracken's trilogy, One Second After, Holding Their Own, and Collapse. I respect a writer who wants to impart their faith in their writings but Rawles went way too far. It really really should be classified under Christianity and not sold as a post apocalype novel. Very little story, heavy, heavy bible thumping and military jargon. I still can't get over the part of him using the word "fornification" in Patriots. Who talks like that? A lot of his beliefs are very archaic.