This was like watching a soap-opera on BBC. Illegitimate children, loveless marriages, evil, scheming women and men, murders, white knights and bad girls with hearts of gold. All of this is in this book and more. It does go ON quite a bit and everything ties up neatly in the end. All in all, I'd say it was entertaining, but , after finishing it, I felt like I always do after eating an entire pan of brownies. Why in the world did I do that? ( )

This book is a wonderful page turner. It is both perfectly plotted, and contains rich and believable characters. I also found there to be an underlying humor to the book that tempered the darkness of some of the characters. Once I started it, I resented having to put it down, and finished it in nearly 24 hours. ( )

Good suspenseful vacation read. ( )

Loved it. This was a nice change from the WWII era Follett that I've read. However, there's one thing that ties all of his books together for me ... his characters. They are always captivating and complex and interesting. The banking stuff is even written in a way that I can understand! The book covers 26 years in the life of a family, and in the end, the good and the bad both get what they're due ... just the way it should be! ( )

This is a quite unremarkable, moderately entertaining work of fiction set in late 19th century England. As with another of Follett's works, A Place Called Freedom, it has little to recommend it over dozens of other similar novels set in the period.

The plot revolves around the Pilasters, a wealthy and contentious banking family, whose various branches struggle for control of the family business. Subplots involving a fictitious South American country and members of the British "underclass" bring some spice into the history. However, as with A Place Called Freedom, the most striking aspect of the novel is its utter predictability. Twists in the story become strikingly obvious scores of pages in advance.

I would rate this novel slightly above the aforementioned A Place Called Freedom, but both pale in comparison to Follett's two novels Pillars of the Earth and World Without End. Readers familiar with those works will likely be disappointed with this effort. ( )