Post Description

Love and War by John Jakes        Book 2 in the North and South trilogy
Narrated by Michael Kramer 
Unabridged OOP from tape
32 44 m  NMR 
Approximate length 42 hrs. 26 min.
20% pars
no repost
format:  mp3



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Description:

Love and War is just as exciting as North and South, with romance, lust, and amazing action sequences straight out of an old-time movie ***. But compared to North and South, this novel is fresher, more surprising, and much, much darker.

The book is massive--over 1000 pages--and includes at least 10 major storylines, almost all of which are skillfully rendered and emotionally compelling.

George and Orry are now men in their maturity, grappling with the viciousness and folly of politics in both Richmond and and Washington. Other storylines take you inside the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Wade Hampton"s South Carolina cavalry, 

the C.S.S. Hunley submarine, 

a Confederate prison, the Union nursing corps, a schoolhouse for black orphans, and even an assassination plot against the president--Jefferson Davis, that is. By ferreting out lesser-known episodes of the war and then peopling them with passionate and realistic characters, Jakes brings the Civil War to life in remarkable degree.

The aspect of the book that struck me the most was how unpopular the war was on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line. There is no hint here of the idealism of Glory or Gone with the Wind. Instead, Jakes writes of a cold, hard, brutal slog in the field, terrific blunders, greedy profiteers, and peace-at-any-pricers wearing both blue and gray. To the participants in the war, there was no hint that anyone would ever regard it as anything other than a disaster that should have been avoided.

Love and War isn"t perfect. The book, like the war itself, gets off to a slow start, and a couple of the storylines are clinkers. One of the key villains, an old classmate of Orry and George"s, is tiresomely evil, yet seems far too incompetent to pull off the mischief he creates here. And the one major African-American storyline is awkwardly drawn, with a saintly couple squaring off against a slathering villain straight out of Birth of a Nation.

Overall, though, I was very impressed with Love and War both as an amazing feat of storytelling and as an insightful and original look at the Civil War, with obvious relevance to today"s political and military dramas. 

Thanks to Ceesah :)