Historical Fiction -- 3 stars
Audiobook Narration -- 5 stars
The Century Trilogy - Book 3
Book: Covering the period from the 1960s to the 1980s, this book is a massive undertaking. The Civil Rights movement, the Cuban missile crisis, the Kennedy assassinations, Watergate, the maneuverings of The Soviet Union, the personal consequences of the wall between East and West Germany are all part of the story. ----- While the first two books in the trilogy seemed, to me, to focus on the characters as witnesses to history, this book reverses that. The retelling of history sometimes becomes so detailed as to be tedious, while the characters come off as cardboard entities, stuck in place to fill a void, not really necessary.
Narration: One true joy was the audio narration. John Lee masters the accents of the American south, Boston, England, Germany, and Russia, switching between them effortlessly. When called upon to act as John Kennedy or Martin Luther King, he gives the rhythm of their speech a touch that, while not true mimicry, resonates with the unique flavor of each man. Even when the book seemed to drag, I enjoyed listening to his voice.
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