Muito bom! Follett não desilude.

Turd pie n /tərd pī/: Something made to appear appetizing, but filled with excrement (see: A Dangerous Fortune).

I was not very far into this book when I discovered the reason people believe Dan Brown is a good author. It is because they have been reading books by Ken Follett. There is nothing original or good in this book, and the characters are grotesque stereotypes that speak as if their dialogue were cut out of other, unrelated, novels. I have several pet peeves when it comes to authors and Follett hit every one within 100 pages of the opening. His sins include:

1. Setting the action in real locations in England, actual named towns and places in London, even businesses and neighborhoods, but he invents a South American nation. He does this I assume so that he can avoid appearing bone stupid about the geographic and cultural and historical realities of South America. This is an old ploy, a favorite of Hollywood especially (from Nuevo Rico to Val Verde) that is used to give an author full sea room to create a fantasy realm where all of the worst stereotypes of the craven dusky Latin who foments violent rebellion for fun and profit while not offending any actual nation. Setting aside for the moment that these paises inventados are always showcases of cartoonish ethnic stereotypes, it offends me mostly because it is just lazy. The man wrote a 500 page 'saga', but can't be bothered to invent or compose a plot device around real events?

2. A Latin lover who proves pure catnip to a frustrated older woman, an attraction beginning when he was a boy of 16. Try and think of even one sexually attractive 16 year old boy. They aren't even attractive to 16 year old girls. An early scene warns the attentive and intelligent reader of squicky adolescent MILF action somewhere before the midpoint of the novel. Just so we are clear; this is not something I hope for in a novel.

3. Having a Sporting Lass make a "gesture with her hand", only to graphically explain the handjob significance in the next sentence. Then again in the next entire paragraph. Why is Follett so needlessly coy here? There are many places where Follett makes a description redundant to the dialogue. So many places in fact, that I estimate that a careful editor could reduce this book by a quarter by deleting just the redundancies peripheral to the plot. Perhaps by a third if the editor could assume that Follett's readers were paying attention.

4. The woman to whom she makes that gesture is successfully employed as an escort yet avoids the expected sex entailed in that line of work for several months. Turns out she is a 'good girl' who wants love and marriage someday. She of course is fated to achieve that goal. The hooker with a heart of gold trope is older than the bible. Follett acts like he invented it.

5. In a city of more than a million souls, the characters constantly meet each other by chance; even when they run in different social circles, live and work in widely separate locations, and are just walking down some street. No one else appears to even live in the City to get in the way.

6. Women only think, talk, dream of men. Even when they lay deep plots, that plot will be in service of men.

7. Men are obsessed with sex, but sublimate that excess energy into their interests.

8. Men's interests are either 'dissipation' or what Follett believes constitutes 'work'. In either event the men demonstrate a predictable level of skill bordering upon the savant.

9. The good-boy character invents the in tray to assist a kindly employer, against whom the other characters are conspiring. This act of kindness will, of course, pay off in rich dividends. It is also supposed to signify his quick invention and quick wits. I want to repeat this point, for emphasis: The good-boy character invents the IN TRAY. It is a box, that he places on a desk, to hold papers requiring attention. We are to assume that prior to 1895 people working at the largest bank in England just threw their papers onto a desk higgledy piggledy.

10. The pieces of the plot appear and fall into place with the impact and accuracy of a monkey throwing his poo at the people assembled outside his cage. Follett is not clever, and so cannot figure out how to introduce a character as an adult with a backstory. This is why we meet them as children, view some significant day in their lives, and then jump 5 years into the future with all of the relationships and action dictated by that one day's events. In Follett novels, your life course is set only once, after that you are fated. NOTE: I debated using a similar monkey metaphor to describe Follett's needlessly graphic fap fantasies that take up maybe one or two hundred pages of this book (or seem to), but decided that would be as offensive as the writing I was describing, well that and Follett kept the skeezy porn passages for the pages after the one hundred page mark I set myself here.

To reveal more would involve spoilers, but trust me these early sins are diagnostic to the remaining 4/5ths of the book.

To summarize: Follett writes like a missing link between Horatio Alger and V.C. Andrews who learned all he knows about writing from close attention to the Forum section of Penthouse Magazine circa 1975.

So, despite appearing to be an actual novel by virtue of rave reviews and being a bestseller, this offensive book is merely a crust filled with excrement.

670 pàg.

4.5/5 A delightful read for those who loved the Century and POTE trilogies. Only thing is, it is a but formulaic, so do not read it immediately after reading Follett’s other historical fiction.
Also, do mark Follett’s “A Place Called Freedom” too.

Another exceptional book by Ken Follett. At one point I had to close the book because I knew something bad was about to happen, and I wanted to pretend for one moment that it wouldn't happen, but then I dived back in. So many threads woven perfectly together to tell the story of a bank and a mother's hunger for status, power and wealth.
19th century England was awash with class distinctions, and complex social rules, and Follett traverses those with mastery. Loved it.

4,5 estrelas.
O livro tem tudo o que o Ken Follet já nos habituou. Personagens fortes, ação é um enredo que nos agarra da primeira à última página. Mas não está ao nível da sua última trilogia.

Hacia mucho que no leía a K.Follet y me ha gustado mucho sumergirme de nuevo en su escritura.
Un libro muy entretenido que te sumerge en las triquiñuelas y embrollos de una familia de banqueros y ambientada en Inglaterra del XIX

Very good story. Tawdry at times….

I know that one's taste in books is subjective and what one person may like might not necessarily appeal to another but I really cannot stress how utterly terrible I found this book.

Imagine Zola's La Curee mixed with a touch of Mary Poppins and just enough Eyeless in Gaza to make one think that this might be a halfway decent read, rewritten by Jeffery Archer as a TV mini series for a minor digital channel and you are 10% of the way to understanding just how awful this novel is.

There is no character development, no plot development, repetitious phrasing and a stunning lack of originality. The story starts in 1866 and ends in 1892, yet in all those years not one of the characters has been on any kind of journey, the evil schemer is still the evil schemer (pursuing exactly the same evil scheme), the talented but naive young man is a talented but naive older man and so on. None of the characters have a second dimension, every reaction to every situation is completely predictable and every interaction exists only to move the plot forward, not that it actually does move forward with the resolution of the incident that happens in chapter one coming some 590 pages and 24 years later.

Then there is the repetitious nature of the writing. In one chapter we might see a scene happen, for example a character losing a lot of money at cards and having to leave England, only to be told two chapters later that said character has had to leave England due to losing a lot of money at cards. This happens time and time again throughout the novel and it is almost as if the author has decided that his readers will be do disassociated from the text that they won't be able to remember anything that has happened. You can almost hear the voice over saying "Previously, in this novel..." which is one reason why it feels so much like it was written with one eye on an adaptation as a mini series, and yet being written relatively early in Follett's career there was no reason why this should be the case. Oh, and if you replace banks with churches you also get a novel that is basically World Without End even down to the scheming mother and self-righteous poor relation.

To give credit where it is due there is one cracking line in the novel, when old Ben Greenbourne (yes he's curmudgeonly, yes he's Jewish, yes he's a banker and yes he is as stereotyped as that makes him sound) says following a highly predictable (and satisfyingly amusing) banking collapse: "If I spend money to rescue you now, the foolish investor will be rewarded and the careful one will suffer. And if banking were run that way, why should anyone be cautious? We might as well all take risks, for there is no risk when failed banks can always be rescued." The flouting of basic punctuation and sentence construction rules aside I rather wish every banker and politician had read that sentence sometime prior to 2011.

Adorei a forma como Ken Follett cria os seus personagens, vilões aos quais é impossível ficar indiferente, heróis que conseguem alcançar os seus objetivos com base no seu esforço e inteligência.
Um início um pouco lento mas assim que a história sofre a sua primeira reviravolta a vontade de ler o livro pela noite dentro aumenta.

Wow! A very beautifully written book! This book was like a strong magnet, I would be up past my bedtime reading into the hours of the night, it was so good!

A Dangerous Fortune tells the story of a tragedy at a school in England during the middle 1800's, the drowning of a student, and it forever changes the lives of everyone involved. The main characters are Hugh Pilaster and his cousin Edward who are the heir to a banking fortune, Malsie Robinson, who's family has gone into bankruptcy and has come into the world on her own and is a love interest to Hugh, Micky Miranda, who has his own deadly agenda that threatens the British economy, and Augusta Pilaster, a rich heiress and mother of Edward.

For the majority of the book we're meant to believe that the main antagonist of the story is Augusta, she's very manipulative, a control freak, patronizing, and condescending, you just love to hate her, but as I read further it made me stop and think a little big.

The more of the book that I read the harder it was to put down. I always seem to say this after reading a book by Ken Follett but I'll say it again anyway, this was probably one of my all-time favorites of his! This would make a killer movie!

A Dangerous Fortune is my third Ken Follett book, after Fall of Giants and Hornet Flight and I have to say after Fortune, he is fast becoming a favourite author of mine. This book was a tremendous read and one that had me hooked and longing to return to its pages to find out what would happen next.

Set in the 19th century, the story spans the decades between the 1860s and 1890s and follows the fortunes of the powerful Pilaster family following the death of a student one summer at a swimming hole near the prestigious Windfield School attended by two Pilaster boys - cousins. The death at the swimming hole set off a chain of events that drove shady alliances, unsavoury deals, intrigue and desperate acts in the name of preserving position and wealth.

The Pilasters own Pilasters Bank and are pivotal and powerful in the London society of the time. Our central character is the family 'black sheep' Hugh, son of a Pilaster who went bankrupt and committed suicide. He suffers from the scheming carried out by his Aunt Augusta in favour of her son Edward and the potential benefits to be gained for her branch of the family, its power and position in society.

Follett has created an impressive cast of characters, set within a richly painted picture of Victorian England - a scene of privilege, position, power and wealth juxtaposed with the decadence of the rich at play amongst the poverty and depravity of the underclass. The characters were so engaging, both good and bad, I found myself rooting for the 'good guys' and hoping for justice to prevail as I read.

It was also interesting drawing parallels with the current day and the global financial crisis. It's remarkable how little has changed in 150 years and how little we've learnt when it comes to financial probity. A Dangerous Fortune is a strong and timely reminder of the tenuous nature of the wealth and comforts of life and how quickly it can all disappear, often through no fault of your own.

I highly recommend A Dangerous Fortune. For me it has everything - murder, intrigue, romance, sex, personal vendettas, revenge, gentlemen's clubs and top hats!