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Book Reviews of Love and War

Love and War
Love and War
Author: John Jakes
ISBN: 144246
Publication Date: 1984
Pages: 885
Rating:
  • Currently 3.5/5 Stars.
 1

3.5 stars, based on 1 rating
Publisher: Harcourt Brace Javonovich
Book Type: Hardcover
Reviews: Write a Review

3 Book Reviews submitted by our Members...sorted by voted most helpful

kaylamariet avatar reviewed Love and War on + 39 more book reviews
Good book. Better than the 1st book in the triogy. Many exciting stories happening with all the characters. Ok ending.
reviewed Love and War on
Author of North and South, about hardships of war
Kibi avatar reviewed Love and War on + 582 more book reviews
An excellent 2d installment of the North and South trilogy, March 9, 2004
Reviewer: Roger J. Buffington (Huntington Beach, CA United States)

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.