Kadomi reviewed Jackdaws by Ken Follett
Review of 'Jackdaws' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
Almost 3.5 stars but not quite. My SO loves Ken Follett books, and I did greatly enjoy his historical novels. I try to veer away from war time novels and political thrillers, so reading this book was a departure for me.
Jackdaws is set in 1944, shortly before D Day. The main protagonist is Felicity Clairet aka Flick, a British spy who works in France together with the French Resistance, her husband Michel being the local leader in Reims. Their target is a chateau in the hands of the Gestapo, serving as major telephone exchange in France. The goal is to destroy the exchange and that way destroy their communications during the Allied invasion. When an initial attack fails, Flick comes up with a plan to infiltrate the chateau dressed as cleaning women, which requires an all-women team: the Jackdaws. The unlikely team has a cast of different women: a …
Almost 3.5 stars but not quite. My SO loves Ken Follett books, and I did greatly enjoy his historical novels. I try to veer away from war time novels and political thrillers, so reading this book was a departure for me.
Jackdaws is set in 1944, shortly before D Day. The main protagonist is Felicity Clairet aka Flick, a British spy who works in France together with the French Resistance, her husband Michel being the local leader in Reims. Their target is a chateau in the hands of the Gestapo, serving as major telephone exchange in France. The goal is to destroy the exchange and that way destroy their communications during the Allied invasion. When an initial attack fails, Flick comes up with a plan to infiltrate the chateau dressed as cleaning women, which requires an all-women team: the Jackdaws. The unlikely team has a cast of different women: a drag queen, a lesbian aristocrat, an older explosives specialist, a murderer freed from prison for the mission, amongst others.
The summary sounds more exciting than the book turned out to be. It took til around the 60% mark for the mission to actually begin. A lot of time was wasted on getting the team together, to weave in sexual encounters that didn't do anything for me plot and character-wise. Despite the team sounding super-interesting in theory, characters fell very flat for me. Very one-note. No time was taken to form any emotional connection to them, didn't really work.
The only character aside from Flick that much time was spent on is the nemesis, Major Dieter Franck, Flick's Nazi adversary. Follett tried to make him seem very human, not your average evil Nazi, but again, he kinda felt flat for me.
That said, the last 40 percent of the book were a quick read and the actual mission was quite exciting to read, so overall it's almost 3.5 stars but not quite.