Customer Reviews

Love and War (North and South Trilogy)

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Love and War is an excellent book. It picks up where North and South left off. From the moments before the Civil War to the days after the South's surrender this book takes a close look at the Mains and Hazards and their trials throughout the four years.

This book, while rather long, is fantastic. It definitely is thought provoking. Mr. Jakes writes from the male standpoint and also the female standpoint. I also thought he conveyed the thoughts and dreams of the slaves in a realistic way. There were characters I loved, such as Billy and Brett and ones I hated, like Ashton and James Huntoon. The ever-evil Bent pops up in the story from time to time wreaking havoc everywhere he goes.

While Gone with the Wind (one of my all time favorite books) is a great book in itself it romanticizes the Civil War. Love and War in absolutely no way romaticizes the events of the war. This is a very realistic book with very believeable characters. One can almost believe these two families did exist.

Any fan of North and South will enjoy Love and War. It is a rather long story but well worth the time reading it.

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 serial. 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.

This continuation of Jakes' "North and South" is well-done and an absorbing read. The book flings the reader into the Civil War, as seen from various vantage-points: Charles, in the Southern calvary; Billy, a Northern engineer; Orry and George, working desk jobs in their respective capitals; Madeline, Brett, and Constance, as "war widows." Bent continues to wreak havoc in the lives of the Mains and Hazards, but despite him, the war and other trying events, the 2 families remain in contact and even help each other during the war. An excellent follow-up to Jakes' wonderful "North and South."

Jakes does a fabulous job of describing the turbulent civil war and also the love of the two main characters. It puts closure to the seemingly never ending torment of Justin La Mont and brings peace to Orey & Madeline. It is John Jakes at his finest. A must read!

Jakes' "North and South" trilogy is a well-written, entertaining, and historically insightful series dealing with America from about 1845 (Mexican War period) through the post-Civil War period. This novel deals with the Civil War from its outset to the conclusion.

The story traces the activities of the Hazard and Main families, great families deriving from North and South respectively and bound by friendship and marriage, through the nation's bloodiest conflict. This is an engaging and entertaining story. Jakes does a good job of showing the reader that the Civil War was probably inevitable given the intractable differences between the North and South, and the stubborness on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line. The story also shows how it came to be that despite the North's numbers and industrial might, it took years for the North to successfully overwhelm the South.

This is not a perfect novel. Despite the overall taut storyline and good prose, Jakes has a tendency to produce exaggerated characters who are almost caricatures of the way people really behave. While there are doubtless real-life examples of Elkanah Bents, Victoria Hazards, and Justin LaMottes (three principal characters in this series) such exaggerated personages abound in Jakes' world. Well, it is after all a novel.

Overall, this is the second best novel in the series; perhaps not as good as "North and South" but better than "Heaven and Hell" which is the third installment. This novel is well worth reading, and provides an entertaining and insightful look at the Civil War and how it affected ordinary people and the nation as a whole.

Jakes is a wonderful author. The story line has so many "true" historic references woven with love stories and family issues. It triggers all kinds of emotions -- laughter, tears, anger, sorrow. It carries right over from North and South. I have the feeling that I actually know the characters and am looking forward to Volume 3, Heaven and Hell. His books are easy reading, hard to put down. You don't have to read 50-100 pages to get into the story.

This book is a very good book!! It starts where the first book North and South left off. This book lets readers find out about the Mains and the Hazards from the first shots fired at Fort Sumter and during the four years of the Civil War. While it is quite a large and long book, it is definitely worth reading!! All the characters are in this book from George Hazard to the very evil Bent.

If you are a fan of the North and South trilogy you will love this book!! Read it and transport yourself back to a time of great turmoil in our great nations history. You will fall in love with many of the characters and will be sad and miss the characters when you are finsihed with the book!!

The second book in the trilogy is a wonderful addition. It is an indepth look at the trials and tribulations the Mains and the Hazards had to bear. It is a moving and exciting piece and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoyed the first.

Just think on it, hair clothing (oh, those shoulder pads), makeup and books. All overdone and in serious need of pruning, as does this overblown book.

Love and War is the second in a trilogy weighing in at 1,000+ pages and continues the story of the Hazard and Main family through the U.S. Civil War, as the South secedes from the Union and a nation is torn in two. At Mont Royal, as elsewhere in the south, the slaves are restless and rebellious, making the plantation difficult to manage. Orry's wound keeps him from the battlefield, but he answers the call of duty taking a desk job in Richmond. Orry's scheming sister Ashton also lives in Richmond with her husband James and she and her lover successfully dabble in smuggling luxury goods. Up north George accepts a desk job in Washington, as does his scheming brother Stanley who is making a mint selling defective shoes to the army. The evil Elkanah Bent continues his mad obsession with the Hazards and Mains, and he also holds possession of Madeline's big secret.

The good - Jakes does a good job with George and Orry as they struggle to retain their friendship when their worlds collide as well as the corruption in government as almost everyone strives to profit off the war. I liked seeing the "not in my backyard" attitude of the North as they must see the slaves freed yet they just want to ship them back off to Africa. I loved Orry and Madeline's relationship, although considering the size and scope of this book you aren't going to see as much of them as you might expect. Ashton of course is delightfully nasty as the bad girl you just love to hate.

The not so good - Jakes has a habit of writing stereo-typed characters, especially the bad guys. Good Southerners are kind to their slaves, the baddies beat them. Bad Northerners hate the blacks as much as they want them freed. Elkanah Bent is just too OTT with his obsession for revenge, I'd have preferred seeing him bumped off and bringing in a new bad guy. It's a big country and a big army and his coincidental meetings really began to stretch credulity. A lot of that I can live with, but the ultimate problem with this book is Jakes just had to throw everything into this one, including the kitchen sink. There are too many characters and too much historical territory to cover in one book and Jakes ends up jumping from one person to the next trying to cover it all. Cut half the book out, shift the main focus to George & Constance and Orry & Madeline with very brief mentions of the secondary characters (I love Charles but he should have been left on the cutting room floor) and Jakes might have had a winner here. As it was, I only finished by skimming a great deal, easily one-third of the entire book. A big thumbs down to the editor for not paying attention to continuity between the two books. A very big deal was made in book one about Orry's beard and most especially in scenes between he and Madeline, yet in book two Orry asks her how she'd feel if he grew a beard. Hellooooo?

**SPOILERS**

I haven't seen the mini-series in years (going to rectify that soon), but from checking out the many videos up on YouTube I was surprised at how different the series is from the book. Elkanah Bent was from the North (and very obese), Ashton's lover is another character. Orry and George were never generals. Brett didn't spend the war years at Mont Royal, but with her husband's family in the North. Matter of fact, neither did Madeline or Ashton, they were in Richmond with their husbands. From what I've gathered, the ending was changed because there weren't plans to film book three and they thought it best to end it this way instead of as Jakes wrote it - and most of you will not like it. I've spoiled myself by picking up on the gist of it and I will definitely pass - at least on the book.

for me this series has nearly fatal flaws that only got worse as the story continued. what I particularly disliked were the boogeymen characters that took an irrational interest in making our protagonists lives miserable. I mean you're writing about a time when hundreds of thousands of people were killing each other and you still feel it's necessary to introduce a sociopathic character (Bent) who should have died in book one but instead lives to harm our "heroes" time and time and time again. and he was not the only one. Billy the engineer somehow becomes a prisoner in Richmond and has his own demented tormentor who hates him more than any other prisoner clearly because he's a character in this book and no other reason. Madeline is tortured by her husband while one armed Orry is helpless to assist. At some point in the series nearly every good Main or Hazard is threatened with destruction by a malevolent force with little rationality behind it. and the coincidental meetings between the characters separated by great distances with limited abilities to communicate between them pile on to the point of ludicrousy. what I did enjoy was getting a feel for what things were really like including the moods of the northerners at different points of the war and attitudes towards Lincoln. If Jakes had stuck with telling things like they were and layed off the melodrama this series could have been the great history lesson some make it out to be.