Night over Water

Follett weaves another fine yarn!

This book is written from the perspective of a handful of different characters who all end up on a transatlantic flight together.

As a master story teller, he weaves it all together exceptionally well, combining action, romance and intrigue.

The conversations and actions near the end get a little cliche' and campy but I think Follet was just trying to capture how people really spoke in 1939 as opposed to sounding a little hokey at times.

The narrator was good.

Of his recent Audible releases, I would rate this one the second best behind "A Dangerous Fortune", which was terrific. The Needle, Triple and Lie Down with Lions are decent but not as good.

I teetered between a 4 or 5 star and rounded up :)

Follett spends a 1/3 of the book setting up his characters like dominoes. Then the plane takes off and he lets the dominoes tumble in wonderfully intertwined yet unpredictable patterns. Nearly all the characters are well developed and highly believable, several conflicted. The plot is more complex than one would expect in such a limited space. This story is very well researched, produced and narrated. Overall: A first rate thriller.

This story will keep you engaged throughout. The characters are well developed separately and brought together with some interesting consequences. Follett is truly a great storyteller more than a great writer. Sure, there are some slightly implausible parts where you think, "Why doesn't he do this or do that?" But, hey, this is a fun story and not a literary masterpiece. If you are the type that scoffs and shoots holes in stories, go ahead. But if you are looking for a fun plane ride with lots of bumps and twists, give it a try.
One caveat, the sex scenes are more descriptive and frequent than is necessary for the story.

The story took quite awhile to get going. The narrative seems to be more directed to a teenage audience then an adult one. The story telling, however, seems to presage the authors subsequent excellent stories.

The narrator does a fine job and his accents carry the story to a certain extent.

I think Follett's "Pillars of the Earth" is a masterpiece and the follow-up novel "World Without End" a worthy read. So when I was browsing for something light, I picked "Night over Water." The basic plot revolves around the Pan American Clipper that flew from London to New York and is set at the outbreak of WW II. I thought it had great potential and was very disappointed when it kept constantly degenerating into long descriptions of character X sexually stimulating character Y. These were not integral to the plot and I finally just quit listening. I'm done with Follett for good!

I love Ken Follet and have been enthralled by his other books. This was not one of them. The story line itself was good. The writing/sex/intregue were all so terribly boring.

On top of that, the reader was unexciting to say the least. He sounded bored with all of it. I was too.

Of course. Pillers of the Earth was unsurpassed.

No interest in what he was reading.

All the sex scenes. Someone said it was like sex of their grandmother. Yep!

Come on Mr. Follet. Please do what we know you can do.

I loved this book but listening to this particular narrator was painful. He put nearly the same inflection on every sentence, so that he always sounded as if he were reading the exciting line of a kid's book. If Follet weren't so good, I couldn't have kept going.

I stumbled on Ken Follett when I joined Audible. What a writer! He is an amazing storyteller and builds characters like few can. Pillars will be in my top five favorites of all times. World Without End is slower to take off, but picks up pace quickly. Love them both!

I've enjoyed several Ken Follet stories but, after the first couple painful hours, I started fast forward, thinking that certainly it had to get better. It never did. Tired plot line, the standard old "passengers on the liner (or train)". The characters are not interesting and I never cared a whit about them. Especially bad is the character Lady Magaret and her caricature of a British wealthy fascist family. Spare yourself, and the credit - avoid this one. (For an example of a great "passengers on a train" story, see the movie TransSiberian - don't know if they have an audiobook of that, but simply referring to it as an example of the genre well written.)

This book read like a bad B movie. This was a first for me with any KF book, so I had to ask myself if it is possible it was the narrator. The narration felt false and made the book sound rather hoaky.

I must give the narrator his due though, he did the accents exceptionally well.