Pros: well written characters, good narrative of the time period, believable interaction in history
Cons: sort of drops the ball with a few characters
The Bottom Line: There Civil War divides a nation and a family. Jakes manages to convey the heartache leading up to this time as a family becomes divided against itself.
AliventiAsylum's Full Review: John Jakes - The Titans
... a gigantic battle centered near a place called Shiloh Meeting House had resulted in casualties almost beyond the mind's capacity to comprehend. Over ten thousand were killed or lost on the Southern side; over thirteen thousand on the other...
A bit of perspective. Americans have slain more of their own in one day than anyone outside of this country has ever managed to.
In his novel The Titans, John Jakes continues the story of the Kent family. The main focus of the novel is Jephtha Kent, a former Methodist preacher turned reporter for the family newspaper in Washington DC just prior to the start of the Civil War. His three sons are now lost to him after standing up against slavery in the Virginia town where he resided, and this has led to his disenchantment with life in general, and a drifting from his own faith.
He remains rich beyond his imagination, yet touches none of it. His former wife's new husband, Edward Lamont is very aware of the riches that will be inherited by his stepsons.
The struggle that ensues throughout the novel is very well-done. We see not only the struggle between either side of the country, but there is also Jephtha's struggles with discovering his own true self. No longer the fanatic that preached against slavery and helped slaves escape, Jephtha is struggling to find his place in the world as it crumbles around him. His concern for his sons on the Confederate side of the war is genuine. The possibility of returning to their lives at some point is the only thing that keeps him going on a daily basis.
At the same time he wants to reject God and all faith, he is drawn to it; both on his own and through the woman who shares his bed, Molly Emerson. She truly loves Jephtha and is so torn by what she sees happening to him. She urges him to turn to the scriptures that were so important and meaningful in his younger life, but feels like a failure when Jephtha's attempts to reenter his son's lives falls apart. Soon, he is not just struggling to find his faith and do his job, but also struggling to stay alive as well.
His oldest son, Gideon has enlisted on the Confederate side in the calvary. In Richmond, he has met a young lady who greatly challenges him and everything he believes in. To him, war is glorious; simply a game to be played. We'll beat the Yankees and be home in ninety days... is largely what the Confederate forces completely believe.
Margaret Marble has seen what the war does to a man through her own father. He fought in Mexico and though he still raves about the gloriousness of it, she sees the truth to it all and tries to impress this onto the man she loves. Gideon cannot bring himself to desert after he has enlisted, nor does he quite believe that Margaret is correct. As he rides off to join his unit at the battle of Manassas, the part since Margaret is so terrified of his dying. Her words and the impression her father made remain with Gideon as he realizes just how gruesome war really is.
We actually see only a little bit of Louis Kent and Michael Boyle, who we were introduced to at the end of the last novel, The Furies. Louis has become a businessman without morals, who sees only improvement to his bottom line as being good, no matter who suffers in the process. Michael tries time after time to reign him in, but ends up quitting and enlisting in the Union army after Louis figures out a way to make a profit by trading with both sides during the war. Along with Joshua Rothman, the family banker, and Jephtha, they plan to expose Louis' scheme in public.
The book comes off very well since Jakes doesn't try to cram too many years into one novel. The characters are well-honed and show that none of the people involved in the Civil War on either side are completely good. Some of the villains seem to have no redeeming qualities, but most of the characters are people struggling to piece together their actual feelings and values during this time.
There is still mention of the so-called "bad blood" of the family which runs into Jephtha's line. However, it would seem that Louis is really the black sheep of the family. I found that there was nothing that Jephtha or his three sons did that did not really remind me of Philip Kent in The Bastard and his own reactions to the wealth and power of his father. Gideon is said to have a bad temper, but Philip showed the same temper when he attacked his half-brother in the first novel. This is where I really felt that the whole background that we were given was dropped. Louis Kent, the man without "the Fletcher blood" has truly been developed into an evil character.
The interaction with historical figures does not seem as contrived or forced as it did in other novels in the series. Jakes manages to use Jephtha's career as a reporter to have him interact believably with great historical figures, as well as having him be in certain places at just the right time to be involved in events.
I can see with what Jakes has written in the novels of the Kent family that cover the period of the Civil War how much more he wanted to do with that time. I would venture a guess that this is what led him to write the trilogy of North and South novels which go into the events of this time period with more depth. Still, in the line of Kent family novels, The Titans is a very strong entry.
For my reviews of the other books in the Kent Family Chronicles (or Bicentennial Series) by John Jakes, see:
"The godfather of historical novelists" ("Los Angeles Times") continues his eight-volume saga of the Kent family, as abolitionist Jeptha Kent and his ...More at HotBookSale
The godfather of historical novelists ( Los Angeles Times ) continues his eight-volume saga of the Kent family, as abolitionist Jeptha Kent and his so...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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