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David McK (3576 KP) rated Fatherland in Books

Dec 20, 2022

Fatherland

Robert Harris | 2012 | Fiction & Poetry

7.7

(3 Ratings)

Book Rating

Robert Harris's best-selling alt-history novel, basically asking what the world would be like if the Nazis had won WW2, and following the investigation by a police officer in the 1960s when a naked body is found floating in a lake on the outskirts of Berlin just ahead of Hitler's 75th birthday, leading to the uncovering of a vast conspiracy...

A conspiracy covering up events, in the 'real' world, anyone with even the slightest knowledge of WW2 history would know about. And rightfully so.

That, I felt, was my biggest problem with the novel - there was just no sense of mystery or intrigue, no real 'what-will-happen-to-the-characters-next?' that made me really want to read on - indeed, there were times that I had to force myself to continue rather than starting another book.

From a personal POV, I think I would have preferred more emphasis on the the alt-history portions of the story (how did Germany win the war? What happened in the UK? To name but two ...) than on the central mystery: to me, at least, the balance is out of whack, favouring the mystery over the little nuggets of such information carefully doled out throughout the course of the novel.

I'm also not that much a fan of cliff-hanger endings, personally ...