Since Toni Morrison’s Beloved, I have routinely ignored literary suggestions by Oprah, however, I decided to read this as it was reported to be a historical book.

The raves for this book really astonish me. If I had to take a wild guess I would say that the people claiming it’s “the best book they’ve ever read” are very, very young people who haven’t widely sampled much literature yet in their lives or perhaps those with a morbid fascination with rape.

Follett’s  method for keeping the reader in suspense is to have the good guys winning first, then the bad guys winning, then the good guys winning, then the bad guys winning… like a poorly written episode of “Dukes of Hazzard”.

The characters are one-dimensional. It’s as if the author did a quick outline before starting the book and gave each character a single trait to manifest. William is simply bad. Tom is simple yet hardworking. No one surprises you. The characters start out a certain way and end the same way. No development whatsoever. No depth of character.

It was a complete waste of 12 hours.