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Summary: Lie Down With Lions
Review: I read this book many years ago, but I'm buying another copy to read again and I expect it to be pretty tattered after it gets passed around to friends and family. How many novels (thrillers, love stories, good reads) are set in Afghanistan? Not many,and this all of those. I don't know if this is the "real" Afghanistan, but it is one version. The people I know are hungry to learn anything they can about this isolated country and Lie Down With Lions is a great place to begin. Ken Follett understands women and writes about them well; women will relate to this story. The Soviets are the bad guys in this book and the Afghans are the victims. Read this and get a glimmer of understanding into the background of these people.
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Summary: Thumbs up
Review: I read this novel for inspiration when writing my own novel, THE SHAPE (available here) by (me) Craig Furnas, and LIE DOWN WITH LIONS was inspiring, a total page-turner, and an introduction to a dangerous land I've never been to. Ken Follet is a master. -- C. F.
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Summary: I Had High Expectations
Review: I think he has put out much better books and this one was the first to really disappoint me. The book is an average book, but I had just read Pillars of the Earth so this one was a let down. The story was interesting and could have been one of the first major attempts to take on the Afghan War via fiction. The staples of a Follett book are there, a great cast that you get to know, a well thought out story etc, I just came into the book expecting too much. He does spend a great deal of time on the issue of how women are treated in Afghanistan and I believe that is why there is a strong woman in the book to even more draw your attention to it. When I read the book it did not strike me much, but with the latest events I skimmed the book and picked up on it.
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Summary: Once you start you can't stop till the last page
Review: I thought this book was excellent. The author took you on a journey through war torn Afghanistan, and made you feel like you were there. Very descriptive, always moving. One of the best works of word painting I have ever read.
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Summary: found this one hard to get into
Review: i'm a huge fan of follet..some of his books are amongst my favorites by any author (dangerous fortune, place called freedom, code to zero, and of course the majestic pillars of the earth), but I just couldn't get into this one.
It's not that I didn't like the characters. I liked the protagonist as well as the 'villains' of the book. I didn't like the setting much though.
It takes place in Afghanistan during the early 80's when the locals are fighting against the russians for their freedom. I'm not really interested in the area or the setting so maybe that had something to do with it.
I hate to say it but I had a hard time getting through this one. The chapters were very long which didn't help much either.
There were some bright points to the book (as with all Follett books of course) but they didn't outweigh, what was to me, the boring story.
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Summary: WAR IN AFGANISTAN IN 1982
Review: I'm just getting acquinted with Ken Follett's writings so I am not as hip as some of the other reviewers. I was also interested in what the content would be now that we are at war with the same country that we "helped" defeat Russia...was that aid a mistake? While this is fiction it gives us a better idea about the geographic layout and the problems faced in a war fought on the enemy's home field. The main characters play out their altruistic games and the chase is on. But how many times can you falldown with a baby being handed back and forth while trying to escape the villains as you cross the highest mountain peaks to reach the next country? The action is breath taking, to be sure, and any minute you expect a bullet in the back or a fatal drop off the narrow trail on the mountain side. Follett can keep you reading on from one close escape to the next but at times I found myself asking what are they doing that for, are they crazy? But you soon find an answer as the story takes yet another twist. I read for the suspense and action and do not try to out guess the author so I enjoyed the book As for the love scene, it was vivid enough the first time that I didn't have to reread it...this was a used book and the pages were not dog eared by previous readers either. It was one of the most sensitive writings I have ever read, especially by a man. Some of the other male writersmight well learn from Follett's sensitivity towards women. Over all, this was an excellent reading.
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Summary: Exciting read
Review: If you like excitment and action you will love this book. Believable characters lead into a plot of mystery and action in a stark landscape. Betrayal, love, and survival pit a young woman aganist harsh realities and difficult choices. Yet, the heroes retain their humanity. It's a good story.
Rating:
Summary: Exciting read
Review: If you like excitment and action you will love this book. Believable characters lead into a plot of mystery and action in a stark landscape. Betrayal, love, and survival pit a young woman aganist harsh realities and difficult choices. Yet, the heroes retain their humanity. It's a good story.
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Summary: Afghanistan, the ill-fated one
Review: It's almost prophetic, when Ken Follet's book LIE DOWN WITH LIONS appeared in 1986, when Afghanistan was invaded by the Russians. As usually, Ken Follett spins a page-turning yarn in the country, that seem to know no peace anymore. Only recently, really have the British and the Americans become interested in land and its' beautiful people, the "lions", of this ill-fated country, bombed endlessly and mercilessly by so-called "Super Powers". What I like about the author is his research into all the subjects he writes about, and the way he can fascinate from page to page.
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Summary: Solid, action-packed crowd-pleaser
Review: It's unfortunate that one of the previous reviewers found so much to hate in "Lie Down With Lions," and I'm guessing it's because that reader was looking for the wrong things. No, Follett's not Faulkner, and you'll get no musings on the human condition. But that's not why one reads Follett; you read Follett for the tightly written, superbly constructed thriller, and, in "Lie Down With Lions," that's exactly what you get.The action is intense, right from the outset, where American agent Ellis blows his cover in Paris, losing in the process his girlfriend Jane, who takes up with another guy and heads with him to Afghanistan, to offer medical assistance to a populace wearied by war against the invading Soviets (sort of a 1980s version of Médecins sans frontières). Ellis tails her there, under the auspices of the US government, to train the Afghan fighters. At which point, the plot thickens, and doesn't let up till the very end. The dynamics of the Ellis/Jane relationship are great, very natural and well drawn in a way one doesn't usually find such relationships drawn in action novels. Their moments of greatest intimacy--including an amazingly and erotically written love scene that rivals anything in Miller or Joyce--help drive one of the novel's main tensions, a tension between the reader's responses to these two characters who are often at odds but both very sympathetic. This tension, though, merely underscores the real, action-based tension surrounding the military skirmishes taking place on the greater stage outside the Ellis/Jane relationship. As some reviewers have pointed out, "Lie Down With Lions" isn't much use as a history primer on the war in Afghanistan, or as a probing meditation on the nature of existence. But that's really beside the point. We read Follett, like we read Clancy and Grisham, because they're amazingly talented story tellers with interesting stories to tell. I've read "Lie Down With Lions" three times and enjoyed it immensely each time.
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