Books, Books, Books, I love Books. (Also, backstory to my life!)

"Met with the richness that was the readers' lives, I was repelled by what I saw as the shallowness of the book's characters."

This is another quote from Amy's article, and I found it to be utterly brilliant.  I read the Left Behind Series when I was in eighth grade, and I could never quite articulate why I disliked it.  To be fair, I mostly read it to challenge my brother, a year older, into proving that I could read those monstrous looking books.  Now, being someone whose favorite book series has books that are over 1000 pages, I  no longer look on length with trepidation, but sometimes with disquietude. (Perhaps this is why I'm prone to sesquipedalianism?)
Even as a fourteen year old, in my full fledged stages of what I like to call "OHMYGODILOVEDRAGONSANDUNICORNSANDMAGIC"  phase of reading (it was a dark time) I think that I understood character development and what the difference between a flat character and a brilliant, vibrant character is.  Sometimes, you can ignore that for the sake of story, hardly anyone would call Harry Potter the most developed character ever (Did I mention I'm still fully in my Harry Potter phase, and content in wallowing in it until I die?) Anyway, with the Left Behind series, I really didn't get a sense of either.  But, as a fourteen year old growing up in a family of  child psychology and religious theology majors (my mother and my  brother respectively) you can't go "I felt as though the characters lacked depth.  I just didn't like them. And the story was lame."  When Amy said that they didn't match the richness of my life (narcissistic much?), I kind of understood.  Books like these, the reasons that they fall flat for me, time and time again,  is that those characters become concepts and not characters. 
As for the story, read any fantasy novel that's over three hundred or so pages (I did have friends, I promise!)  There will a prophecy and suffering and trickery and rebellion.  That's the way these things work.
Ultimately, to go beyond any archetype, you have to tell it in a interesting way. This is why Harry Potter sells well; it's interesting, it's the same story in a different light, with characters that are believable.  Left Behind failed for me because it was the same story, same characters, and it didn't match up with the emotional spectrum of anyone's life.