This book was looooooong. Maybe too long. There were quite a few parts that could have been cut out, and I found myself bored on several occasions. The story of Russia, however, is fascinating, and this book tells its story through a generations of different families: a family of serfs and peasants, a family of landowners, and a family of merchants. It starts at the beginning of Russia (when it was called Rus) all the way up until the end of WWII. I found the parts about the Russian Revolution the most fascinating, as well as the time periods set during Catherine the Great and Ivan the Terrible. Overall a great book, but it's more suited to cozy winter nights rather than a summer read.

Took forever for me to get into the book. Probably around 450 pages in I started to enjoy it. I don't know much about Russian history so I think that played a large part in it. Overall it was good.

Holy moly. I do like Edward Rutherfurd but dang these are long.

I've always loved books that attempt to encapsulate a history and culture in a novel. The master, of course, is Mitchener, but my favourite is probably Monsarrat's The Kapillan of Malta. This is a good old fashioned historical novel and kept me going for three weeks. Pretty good.

I was surprised how much I enjoyed Russka. I would be interested to know what made Rutherford choose Russia since all of his other epic novels are set in Ireland and the UK. Russka is slightly different from Rutherford's other work in that there is a strong focus on modern Russian history (over 2/3 of the book). Because he takes his time with the last five centuries, a lot of the characters are in several stories. It didn't feel like a collection of isolated stories like Princes of Ireland and Sarum.

Pick this one up!

This was the first Edward Rutherford book I read, and I was immediately taken in by both the book itself and its genre. Edward Rutherford writes location-based historical fiction--that is, instead of recounting an important life or event, he selects a location (in this case, a town in the Ukraine) and spins his tale around the place. This book begins in preliterate Russia and ends with the fall of the Soviet Union, always centering around one area (actually two, the original town Russka "moves" at one point) and two main families, one boyar family and one peasant one. But unlike his predecessor and mentor, [author: James Michener], Rutherford's characters possess only some inherited characteristics for the sake of continuity but are unique people. Realistically, the characters largely unaware of anything that happened more than a few generations back, and Rutherford skillfully avoids falling into the temptation of preserving unrealistic continuity--heirlooms get lost, family lines die out, fortunes change. An excellent and absorbing read, not to mention educational--the books are also well researched and carefully written.

Pop Sugar 2018 Reading Challenge-A book set in a country that fascinates you

Pretty much every country fascinates me. I love to travel. Unfortunately I'm not a millionaire, but I've been blessed to have gotten a few chances to go abroad. Not to Russia, though.

I love the big sweeping epics that take place over generations, like Michener and William Martin. I've read several other Edward Rutherford books, and he never fails to entertain me. It's fun seeing how the generations intertwine.