Rating: 
Summary: A spy adventure, par excellence, with erotic romance
Review: A spy adventure, par excellence, with erotic romance -- vintage Follett.
If you like your thrillers spiced with spies, a chase scene, atmosphere, non-stop action and a good dose of romance then this is your "beach read"
However, 'Lie Down with Lions' will inform you as well as entertain you. This week on the radio I heard the statement, "good fiction should not be didactic". Ken Follett, as his writing demonstrates, strongly disagrees with this statement. His informative insight into the old KGB, the CIA, the mind of a terrorist and the brutal and barren world of Afghanistan are more than entertaining, they are enlightening.
I have physically trekked through the remote worlds that Follett writes about. I have felt the same exhaustion and despair that Follett brilliantly captures in his hero and heroine as flee the wrath of the KGB across the snow bound Khyber Pass. Because of my work, I have known the joys and sorrows that Follett's pen elucidates, as he sets his novel in the world of international humanitarian medical care. I marveled how well he captures the essence of this work.
'Lie Down with Lions' is one of Follett's best crafted reads. A solid love story, with larger-than-life characters, wrapped in suspense and tension. KUDOS. Highly recommended 4.5stars
Rating:
Summary: "Electrifying, thrilling...a page turner..."
Review: Electrifying, thrilling....a page turner....is hardly a sufficient description of this book. The plot is perfect, the characters are idenifiable and to say the least the climax is just plain exillilarating"
Rating:
Summary: This book joins a handful of my all-time, most favorite read
Review: Few writers can craft a story as artfully as Ken Follett. His characters, always well developed, are especially vivid in this book. Mr. Follett's respect for women is evident in the strength of character and spirit with which he endows them. Speaking as someone who has read all of his books, I believe that this may be his finest work. If you like this book, may I recommend "The Mask of Time" by Marius Gabriel and another Follett book, "The Man From St. Petersburg". If you read and enjoy these as I did, I'd love to hear from you. Jack Jackson
Rating: 
Summary: Follett is Hot and Cold
Review: Follett's common theme of creating vivid characters and aiming them on a collision course takes you to Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion. Lie Down with Lions moves fast and has one of the most intense sexual scenes I have ever read. Like a metaphor for the book as a whole, the same characters are soon on an icy trek over the Himalyas.
Like his lovers, the book is hot and cold. The plot is thin and implausible. The bad guys are two dimensional. But Follett's descriptive powers are in good form. This is a great book for a boring trans-continental flight.
Rating: 
Summary: Vapid and weak. Literary Gruel.
Review: I cannot believe all the good reviews on this site for "Lie Down with Lions". It is truly an empty action novel with little to redeem it. To give the book some credit, the characters were well defined. Unfortunately they were two-dimensional and transparent. This is one of those novels where the villain is SO EVIL and the protagonist is a cartoonish superman. You can almost visualize the author rubbing his hands together between chapters, in rapture at how cool the protagonist is, but I found the character to be pathetically shallow and underdeveloped. If they made a movie out of this book, the hero would best be portrayed by Chuck Norris (and that's not a compliment). The author's world is again, a ridiculously over-simplified black and white world. "Ooooo, those evil Russians! Thank God for America!" If you're a simple-minded American who likes vapid action with no real content (and apparently there are a lot of you), I'm sure you'll think this one is a classic.
Rating:
Summary: I think this may be Follett's best.
Review: I don't recall having read any book in which the characters were better developed. It almost gave the reader a feeling of being there and feeling every emotion for himself. A great read!
Rating:
Summary: Worst Follett Ever
Review: I like Ken Follett's work (well, most of it), but this one was a huge disappointment. His best books are those that take place during WW2; that's when he's at his best. The others vary greatly. I didn't care for "Man from St. Petersburg" -- good plot but awful characters -- but this one takes the cake. I see that many reviewers liked it, but I found the plot boring and
the pace slow -- I skipped over all the descriptions of life in Afghanistan, as well as all the scenes of Jane bonding with her baby. The main problem for me, though, was the characters. If I don't like the main characters I don't care what happens to them. Jean Pierre was fine as an evil Commie villain, but I just couldn't warm up to Ellis & Jane as the hero & heroine. Call me old-fashioned but I like my protagonists to be a little more on the straight & narrow than these two. As for the much-vaunted sex scene -- I know some reviewers found it erotic, but I found it just plain vulgar, including the language used to describe it! It's one thing to put dirty words in the mouth of a character, but for the omniscient narrator to use them as descriptons was too much. If you're new to Follett, go to the WW2 novels instead.
Rating:
Summary: Worst Follett Ever
Review: I like Ken Follett's work (well, most of it), but this one was a huge disappointment. His best books are those that take place during WW2; that's when he's at his best. The others vary greatly. I didn't care for "Man from St. Petersburg" -- good plot but awful characters -- but this one takes the cake. I see that many reviewers liked it, but I found the plot boring and
the pace slow -- I skipped over all the descriptions of life in Afghanistan, as well as all the scenes of Jane bonding with her baby. The main problem for me, though, was the characters. If I don't like the main characters I don't care what happens to them. Jean Pierre was fine as an evil Commie villain, but I just couldn't warm up to Ellis & Jane as the hero & heroine. Call me old-fashioned but I like my protagonists to be a little more on the straight & narrow than these two. As for the much-vaunted sex scene -- I know some reviewers found it erotic, but I found it just plain vulgar, including the language used to describe it! It's one thing to put dirty words in the mouth of a character, but for the omniscient narrator to use them as descriptons was too much. If you're new to Follett, go to the WW2 novels instead.
Rating:
Summary: Great book, great readers
Review: I purchased this book because the setting -- Afghanistan -- sounded interesting, I like spy stories, and I'd just read Jackdaws by Follett which I'd thoroughly enjoyed. This book exceeded my expectations. Three characters are the main focus of the story -- Ellis, a CIA agent, Jane, the woman he loves and wants to marry (although she doesn't know it), and Jean-Pierre, the man who also wants Jane for himself. From the beginning Jane and Ellis's relationship is rocky because she doesn't know he's a spy and some of his actions have her puzzled. She wants more of a commitment and he doesn't seem willing to cooperate. On the day he decides to come clean about what he does for a living and how he feels about her, all hell breaks loose. The next thing Ellis knows, Jane is gone and so is Jean-Pierre. Ellis later accepts an assignment to Afghanistan and their paths cross again. The fact that Jane now has a child doesn't change the way he feels. He's still in love with her, but he expects no love in return. Aside from that, his mission could get him killed and he doesn't want to bring harm to her or her child. Besides that, Jean-Pierre, who's always been jealous of him, has no intention on losing Jane to a past rival. What follows is a roller-coaster ride of action, danger, romance, and suspense. I listened to the unabridged audiobook version of this book and the cast of six readers were excellent. They changed their tone and pace to fit the scenes that they read. As a result, the characters seemed to come alive. Follett does a pretty good job of giving you enough of a description to help you envision the scenery and the dialog was good. To top it off, the action made sense and was interesting. I don't know if the book accurately portrays the people of Afghanistan, so I didn't accept some of the characters' observations about how they are as a people. I mainly listened to the book to be entertained and it did that superbly.
Rating:
Summary: Literature / history it's all the same
Review: I read the book again few days ago to make sure that I had not missed anything of importance the first time around. I hadn't. The book is a pleasant reading with sensual and real people that capture the imagination. Now my question is this. Why on earth did the author and/or the publisher allow this story to be ruined in a terrible movie? It would not surprise me if that movie didn't manage to turn hundreds of people off Follett for good. Still I am waiting for the next Pillars of the Earth, Eye of the Needle etc.
|
