It's sad to say that 'Code to Zero' was Follett's first real flop and disappointment!

The book is filled with unnecessary cheesy hyperboles, and a plot that tries to be creative but it goes nowhere! Sadly, the idea of writing a book about USA vs U.S.S.R cold war, in the likes of a character that suffers 'amnesia' becomes a little too daunting, even to the master Follett. The characters are so poorly developed, mostly due to Follett's insistence of contrasting the story in the present and with irritating flashbacks! Some ideas are downright incoherent, and that left me frustrated and waiting to finish the book!

Follett was bound to err at some point! Even Michael Jordan has flubbed the winning point at the buzzard and missed the winning shot; Usain Bolt the fastest in the world finished his career with a disappointing 3rd place finish, and even Michael Phelps failed to medal gold in the Olympics... Humans are humans after all, and we're bound to fail at times.


Ken Follett is an absolute master of storytelling, and he's able to weave stories that are rich, with well developed characters and historical accuracies that astounds the soul! Follett's 'Pillars of the Earth' is astonishing achievement in literary composition. This frighteningly mediore book 'Code to Zero' is certainly an anomaly, and I don't really recommend it to anyone.. unless you have 5 hours to kill and enjoy the occasional mental torture.





"I've failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed."
- Michael Jordan


2 sad Stars :(

I wish I could give this book a Zero star rating. I have read may of Ken Follett's other books and found them all to be well-written and well-researched. Not this time. "Code to Zero" has an impossibly bad story line with way too many coincidences, cheesy characters, badly written dialogue, over-the-top scenes, bad sequencing... I could go on. I echo the sentiment of another reviewer, who questioned whether Mr. Follett actually wrote this drivel himself. I will be tossing my copy in a recycle bin to spare anyone else I know from wasting his or her time reading it, all the while hoping for the end of the book to come quickly. To Ken Follett, if he should ever see this commentary: You are capable of much better. Please don't embarrass yourself like this again.

Although the story was quite entertaining, I'm finding more and more that I'm not the right reader for the kind of story. That's why I cleaned up my reading pile by a few agent thrillers and look now forward to reading something else.

If there was ever a poster boy for book smart, people stupid, it would be the hero of this story. Everyone around him is a Soviet spy and which he is totally obviously about and (no kidding), he is a rocket scientist for NASA-LMAO!! Neither NASA or the CIA will endorse this novel as they both come off as idiots.
Add a plot that puts the fuddle in befuddled and only Follett's reputation got this published. Very disappointed in book.

You can't possibly put it down, it's that good!

He visto que el libro tenía 999 reseñas, así que no he podido evitar poner una y ser la 1000

Ken Follett can write brilliant, complex, gripping novels. This is not one of them. The whole thing manages to be bland and convoluted at the same time and stretches credulity to the breaking point.

Meh

I loved it. When I was about 60% through with the book, I thought it was going to be one of my favorite books. The ending was a little disappointing and didn't have a marvelous ending, but I thought the story-line was great. I really enjoyed the fact that the plot was unpredictable for such a long time. Normally, as the book winds down the ending becomes more and more predictable as was the case with this book, but it took so long for that to happen, that I had to keep re-guessing how it would end.

So, not one of my favorites, but very very good.

Ken Follett is certainly among my favorite authors.
He has, like John Grisham and Jeffrey Archer, a great ability in constructing plots and describing the action in an exciting way and at the same time easy to follow. It's the case with Code to Zero and only some coincidences of timing (too obvious ones...) in the final part separate the novel from one more star.

Decent thriller centered around the space race of the late 50s & 60s. Solid 6 of 10 stars

Carino, anche se rispetto agli altri libri di Ken Follett che ho letto l'ho trovato un po' lento, forse perché l'azione accade in tre giorni. Comunque, l'ultimo capitolo mi ha fatto commuovere come al solito.