Heaven and Hell is the third and final volume in John Jakes's Civil War trilogy. Like the first and second books (North and South and Love and War, respectively), Heaven and Hell follows the Main and Hazard families, each member now navigating the turbulent , post-war years.
Unfortunately, Heaven and Hell doesn't hold a candle to the first two books. For starters, some of the most interesting and colorful characters met their end during the war. Others are essentially and, in my mind, rather inexplicably written out early in this book, reappearing briefly, and with little effect, in the closing chapters. I have a particular beef with Jakes's reintroduction of one character 11 years and seven children after last appearing in the book! )
The greatest crime, though, is that Heaven and Hell, for lack of a better term, has simply jumped the shark. There's just too much here that is too improbable. Rather than racing to the end to learn what happened, I found myself racing through it just to finish. I wasn't giving up after 2500 pages, with the finish line only a few hundred more pages away! Although many of the events seemed possible in and of themselves (many, but not all), it strained credulity too far to think that a small handful of individuals could be party to them all. Furthermore, after 2800 pages, I was disappointed that a few of the characters more or less disappeared.
In the end, Heaven and Hell was a disappointing finish to an otherwise excellent trilogy. To that end, I give the entire trilogy three-and-a-half stars, but the final installment receives but two.
No comments:
Post a Comment