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Code to Zero

Code to Zero

List Price: $7.99
Your Price: $7.99
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: USA'S SPACE PROGRAM THREATENED BY CIA DOUBLE AGENTS
Review: Give it 3-1/2 stars but it is notup to the standard we hold Follettto. The plot is good but draggedout and has little suspense. Healternates with a group of friendsat Harvard and now as scientistsin the space program. Double agents are not revealed until theend where most of the action takesplace. Dr. Lucas, Luke, wakes up in apublic rest room looking like a bum. He has amnesa but his instincts tell him this is not howhe lives. By deduction he figureshe is a professional person with agood education. Most of the firstpart is learning who he is. Thenhe tries to determine why he wasgoing to Huntsville and WashingtonDC. when he should have been at the Cape preparing for the missile launching. The next part he spendstime with his old friend, trying to figure out who the double agents are and why he married his wife and why they don't have anychildren. Follett tries to putsuspense into all this but it lacks the sparkle so it becomesho-hum reading.He and his true love finally figure things out and swing intoaction to prevent the destructionof the missile.I had read this book before but did not remember it except certainparts seemed familiar. Guess itdidn't make much of an impressionthe first time around either.I would say skip this one or if you do want to read it, borrow itfron the library and spend yourmoney on a better book.I'm looking up the next book tomake sure I want to buy it..

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: I was struggling to hate the book
Review: My old roommate left this book at my house when he moved out. It sat their for about a year. The only experience I had ever had with a Ken Follet novel was years before when I read "The Third Twin". I was not very impressed with that book, and from then on I had decided to steer clear of the entire Follet scene. Hence my disappointment, when I heard a car horn honk and I saw myself grabbing the Follet book as I dashed out the door for a long weekend at a cottage.

When the time came around to hunker down and read the book, i was pleasantly surprised. It was definately not the worst book in the world. As others have said the writing was poor, and one line in the book prompted me to read it aloud to the people in the room.

Luke looked in the mirror, and with a voice trembling with terror said "WHO AM I?"

I wrote a story like that when I was in grade six. However, things do pick up speed and get more interesting. All you have to do is ignore the clunky dialogue, and let your mind take some inspired leeps of faith.

I really wanted to hate this book, but I really couldn't. The reason why is that it was exactly what I thought it would be. A fast, pulpy, silly, piece of fluffly, literary escapism. If I had wanted to read a book because of the prose of the author, and the beauty of language, I would have.

Read it. But know what you are getting into. It won't change your life, but it will make the line at the bank move a heck of lot faster.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Poor writing
Review: I have enjoyed many of Ken Follett's books. Sadly, I did not enjoy this one. It seemed as if it was written for a grade school student. To make matters worse, the characters did not react in realistic ways.
All too often, the dialog goes something like this:
Luke: "Hi, are you my wife? I am glad to have found you. I have amnesia, and I can't remember anything. Sorry I have been gone for so long."
Wife: "That's okay. I understand. What can I do for you?"
While this may not be an exact quote, it is pretty close to what is in the book.
Because of the ludicrous dialog, I just couldn't get into the book. The good thing is that it is a quick read.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Good beach read
Review: I found this book to be a good page-turner, the kind you might rip through over a day or two on vacation. As with all Follett books the depth of research and historical accuracy are stunning. The plot and characters are bit more shallow than his other works; if you loved (as I did) "Pillars of the Earth" than this one may be a bit of a disappointment. Contrary to other reviewers I thought the timeline and methods the protagonist used to recover his memory were very plausible, but some of the action (especially the climactic scene, jeeesh give me a break!) depend too much on coincidence.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Page turner from the first
Review: If you don't have trouble putting this book down, there's a problem! It gripped me from the fly leaf! It's a good old-fashioned thriller. A man goes on a journey of self discovery because he's lost his memory while a disaster looms. I beleive the book spans only a very short period of time and yet it keeps you literally on the edge of your seat! I read the book and then listened to it on tape with my husband and I think it is equally entertaining either way.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Enjoyable
Review: The book is a great read. Yeah i agree with many people that it wasn't exactly the "MASTERPIECE" people have come to expect from Ken Follet, but i supposed that's waht makes his other books, MASTERPIECES... (They can't all be masterpieces)

First i sort of agree with a Reviewer who wrote "I was appalled at all the anachronisms and mistakes"... and i would like to add another one i didn't quite see here (yet). Doesn't Billie at one point say something like... "nope, that's all she wrote!"... Is that in reference to the "Murder She Wrote"... Maybe i'm wrong but was "Murder She wrote" around in 1958???

I hope i don't sound like i didn't like the book. It was realy entertaining, and although at some points you did have to "swallow" what he was saying just for the story to continue, it was thick and hard at times... (LOTS of luck for one person in just 48 hours).

One thing i think that i can bring to this review table that i don't think i've read anybody say is that i think this book would (or could possibly have been) one of those "Typical Follet" books, (like needle, pillars, rebecca) if the story ended and Anthony was the good guy, and that Luke was in fact the bad guy (as Anthony was maintaining).

He had me convinced that Anthony was the bad guy far before it said it in black and white, so my normal thinking was : well, if he's got me so convinced that Anthony is the bad guy, and that luke is the good guy, then it must be the opposite...

I don't know: when the story ended, and i never saw that page turn saying "Anthony was right all along... it had been Luke who was the spy!"... That would have turned stuff around!

All together there are 3 stars because its a VERY entertaining book. And that's why he wrote it. Lost a star because its not a masterpiece, and one for all the crap i had to swallow to get through it, and so only those masterpieces should get the 5.

One last point: I dind't even bother to read the "Rocket" story that preceeded every chapter (pertaining to 1958). I waited until the last 35 pages to read back through, so it was fresh in my memory when the rocket actually launched... And i think that made it better...

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Little confusing
Review: The whole book was totally different than what I am used to reading. It tended to jump around a bit to much and was semi-hard to follow at times. It needed to reenstated its points more often and not throw so much information at the reading in such a short period of time.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A great read
Review: This is a very enjoyable book, well worth reading. Great suspense, very hard to put down. And great characters.

Some reviewers have a tendency to "grade down" all of Follett's books because they compare them to his Eye of the Needle and don't find them as good. That's silly. Eye of the Needle is a classic, and no writer can be expected to write the perfect book every time. I typically favor "higher-brow" literature, yet I really enjoyed Code to Zero. It fully deserves 4 stars.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Big Time Disappointment
Review: I don't know what happened to Ken Follett's writing but this book reads like it was written by a junior high school student. It's superficial, trite, and not worth the time. Having read some of Follett's previous books, such as Eye of the Needle and Pillars of the Earth, I had to wonder if this book was really written by him.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Dirty Work at Cape Canaveral
Review: It is 1958. A man awakens on the floor of the men's bathroom in Washington's Union Station and realizes that he has no memory. Is he the drunken bum that it appears, or is he someone else? As he works to restore his memory, he finds that he is scientist Claude Lucas, who holds a forgotten secret affecting America's future in space. It is hidden because someone deliberately erased his memory. But learning this brings peril. CIA agents pursue him, and they intend to kill him. While the countdown proceeds for America's desperate try for its first successful launch into space, Lucas uncovers the secret. Can he act in time to keep everything from blowing up? This story is not as powerful as Follett's recent Jackdaws, but it's a mighty fine thriller that will hold your attention. If you like spies and suspense, this is for you.


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