Ultimul zbor al unui hidroavion peste Atlantic a avut loc chiar în primele zile ale intrării Angliei în război. Mai mult ca singur că a fost un zbor obișnuit. Follett imaginează acest ultim zbor ca fiind o adevărată aventură a unor oameni care își părăsesc vechea viață. Într-o singură noapte fiecare pasager va avea propria aventură, iar la capătul drumului va deveni o altă persoană.

I loved the book, however it was not as suspenseful in the air as I thought it would be. Follett did a good job of the character development of everyone, would love a sequel. Another good Follett book that takes you in right from the beginning.

I can't find what I loved so much about The Pillars of the Earth in Follett's other books. I think I'll stick to that trilogy and then possibly the Century trilogy but steer clear of the others...and I regret to be saying this.

Un libro scritto davvero bene, l'idea di fondere fatti storici realmente accaduti e personaggi immaginari strutturati molto bene con i loro intrecci rende la lettura appassionante. La lettura non stanca in quanto si passa ad analizzare ciascun personaggio alternando tra questi, e penso che sia questa la vera forza di questo romanzo la cui storia non mi ha deluso.

A Strange Kind of Meeting


An odd group of people will fly over the Atlantic Ocean for an estimated period of 30 hours. Among others, you’ll find a charming thief, a British noble family, a German scientist, a runaway maiden and a killer with his mob.

In those 30 hours they’ll have plenty of time to socialize in all possible ways, although it’s hard to imagine one of them having the slightest conversation to any of the others. However, we could always provide ourselves some entertainment in a crazy guessing game:

Will they play Monopoly or Bingo? Or maybe they’ll be more in the mood for Roulette?
Will they talk about the BDSM in Fifty Shades of Grey or discuss Shakespeare’s most relevant plays?
Will the burglar start stealing everything around or make a pass at the runaway maiden?
Will the murder start shooting everyone except the pilot, or socialize with the German scientist to improve his German accent?

Etc, etc... we could go on endlessly like this, without getting nowhere but here

Probably could earn another half star. Not Ken Follett’s best but fast paced enough to keep reading at a lively pace. The good people, male and female were suitably good looking, the baddies were mean and ugly. The good lookers had lots of indulgent fully described sex at, sometimes, the oddest times. The baddies did lots of rape threats and unwelcome grabbing. However the stars were earned mainly because of the Clipper descriptions and the analysis of political factions at the start of WWII.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BCn7EMIRt...

This novel takes place in 1939 just after England has entered World War II. It's told from multiple points of view, all from people who will take a flight aboard a Pan-Am Clipper (a truly luxurious (and historically accurate) airplane in the second 2/3rds of the book. This is sort of like a "Murder on the Orient Express" set-up although more thriller than who-dunnit mystery. Passengers include business people, aritocratic families, a debutante, a film star, a petty thief, etc. They all have reasons for being on this luxury plane ride across the Atlantic, some of them because they want to be there and some because they have to be. The thriller/action part of the plot surrounds the lead engineer of the plane who is forced to sabotage it in order to save his wife who has been kidnapped in America. Follett leaves the reasons for this unclear at first as well as who the kidnappers are but uses it to build the suspense. In the end it turns out to be quite a complicated plot but I won't spoil it for you.

This is a well-plotted novel; the suspense builds as we make our way through the story and we get to see events from several perspectives. Mr Follett does a great job building his characters and even though there are quite a lot of them, it is easy to follow the action because we know them so well. And he does a fantastic job of establishing the atmosphere. The descriptions of the scenes and especially the dialog of the characters really brought me in to the era. Sometimes it was like I was watching a Humphrey Bogart movie. I highly recommend it for fans of WWII era historical/thriller fiction.

My first Ken Follett. Devoured it. I was firmly living in the 1930’s every time I picked it up. Atmospheric, amazing characterisation, suspenseful and “shexy”

In the movies and advertising, there’s a visual technique that highlights images to better define and sell concept. It’s called storyboarding. It’s not a process that’s conducive to writing. If anything, it’s the opposite. The use of pictures instead of words. But with a novel that’s written to be sensational, I can see where a similar process might be used to actually fast track production, satisfy publisher demands, strike while the iron’s still hot and make lots of money. Ken Follett’s 1991 bestselling book, ‘Night Over Water,’ feels diagrammed. There’s action and sex a plenty, but the end product reeks of being contrived. In this case, plot boarding. The book’s easy to read. Entertaining on an adolescent level. Too bad it’s just pure crap.

Follett’s made millions being a popular author. I’ve read several of his books. ‘Pillars of the Earth’ and the second of its two sequels were outstanding. ‘Pillars’ was written in 1989. It propelled him to another level commercially. No one foresaw that kind of success coming. Follett was able to write his own ticket after that. So, in my opinion, ‘Night over Water’ was merely a matter of meeting demand and capitalizing on the moment. It certainly doesn’t qualify as an historical novel. It’s a soap opera built around an aviation phenomenon. A sea plane capable of making a trans Atlantic trip at the beginning of WWll from London to New York. Each passenger’s backstory is spliced together to form an elementary level of intrigue. Complete with multiple happy endings built entirely on convenience more than reality. A convenience, no doubt, many readers found willing to accept. Instead of rendering an insightful portrayal of wealth and class, the novel’s an insult to womanhood. The men are rubes and the ladies are sex objects. I couldn’t take it seriously. I found it embarrassingly funny. Too absurd to be true.

‘Night Over Water’ was the February selection of my senior book club. Discussing such a disaster should prove more noteworthy than the book. What could be more titillating than rehashing sex scenes with a group of women I barely know? There might even be talk of a book ban. That would be a first I hadn’t seen coming. No pun intended.

An odd combination of action, mystery and historical fiction. The passengers on a Pan Am sea plane fleeing to the US after Britain declares war on Germany include a British Nazi and his family, a thief, an American brother and sister fighting over control of their US shoe company, an escaping German nuclear physicist. You get the idea...add in a plot to capture the German scientist and return him to Germany...It is definitely a page turner!

I found the main character awesome: the Pan Am Super Clipper. From 'Author's Notes': "Only twelve Boeing B-314s were built...There are now none left anywhere..." The Deck Plan w/seats and names plus the charted flight plan drawings were handy references. But I felt the story itself fell short of what this Super Clipper deserved. Haley's "Airport"(1970s) and Dame Christie's "Death In the Air" (1935-also with a Deck Plan of the airliner 'Prometheus') are superior ancestors of Follet's effort, imo.