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wwatts1734's review against another edition
3.0
"The Hornet's Nest" is the first novel by President Jimmy Carter, and that fact alone makes this book a compelling read. It is a historical novel set in Georgia during the years leading up to and during the American Revolution. If this were a history rather than a historical novel, I would probably give this book a rating of four or even five, unfortunately this book lacks many of the elements that are indispensable to a great novel. A historical novel should be a great story placed in a historical setting. But this novel, like many novels written by historians, is essentially a history with a few fictional characters and events thrown in.
The first third of the book deals with a Quaker family who move to Georgia in the 1760s, and have to deal with the slavery, the relations with Native Americans and the hostility of the locals to the British colonial rulers that they found there. However, once the war begins, the novel drops the pretense of being a novel and simply sticks to relating the historical events that took place in the war. The Quaker family is lost from this point until almost the end of the narrative. Several other fictional characters are introduced, but there is no character development, the characters are simply used to narrate the events of the war. There really is no story here either. It's a shame because the writing is quite good, and I learned a lot about the events of the Revolutionary War in Georgia by reading this book. But it's not a novel per se. The reader should be aware of that.
Overall I would recommend this book to people with an interest in the colonial history of the American South, as well as fans of Jimmy Carter.
The first third of the book deals with a Quaker family who move to Georgia in the 1760s, and have to deal with the slavery, the relations with Native Americans and the hostility of the locals to the British colonial rulers that they found there. However, once the war begins, the novel drops the pretense of being a novel and simply sticks to relating the historical events that took place in the war. The Quaker family is lost from this point until almost the end of the narrative. Several other fictional characters are introduced, but there is no character development, the characters are simply used to narrate the events of the war. There really is no story here either. It's a shame because the writing is quite good, and I learned a lot about the events of the Revolutionary War in Georgia by reading this book. But it's not a novel per se. The reader should be aware of that.
Overall I would recommend this book to people with an interest in the colonial history of the American South, as well as fans of Jimmy Carter.
rek56's review against another edition
challenging
slow-paced
2.0
I know he was a President but, my 16 year old Granddaughter writes better than this. It's like reading a poorly written history book with some conversations thrown in.
meganmargoking's review against another edition
1.0
I first heard of this book when Carter himself mentioned it when he was being interviewed by Jon Stewart on The Daily Show. It sounded interesting, because I kind of specialize in early American history, and c'mon this is a novel written by an ex President. But to my disappointment, this book sucked. There's way too many main characters that Carter focuses on. And if there has to be a main character, which would be Ethan Pratt, he's absent for good part of the book. The characters all seem to have the exact same personalities as well and are mostly two dimensional. But each character brings a new conflict, a new side to the Revolution. Like Kindred shows the struggles of Indians, Quash shows the struggles of slavery and Brown shows the struggles of being a loyalist. But with a couple of these characters, they seem to be only token characters in order to show us this side of the story. Because once Carter is done showing us this side of the conflict, we never hear of them again. This book focuses on the American Revolution in the southern colonies like North and South Carolina and Georgia. But again, the main character, Pratt, doesn't even get into the war until long after the Congress declares us a Nation. It probably would have been better if the character would have been involved in the war sooner rather than later. This really could have been written better. Like other reviewers says, it really does read like a text book and sounds like non fiction. Apparently, Carter's actual non-fiction books are good so I don't want to give up on President Carter just yet. But this book was not a good first impression.
infosifter's review against another edition
2.0
This felt more like a group of rather random biographies edited together than a novel. It was quite educational—we don't often hear about what happened during the revolutionary war in the south — but it was so dryly written that it was almost impossible to maintain interest. One interesting theme is the way the revolutionary war set up issues that wouldn't be resolved, or even begin to be resolved, until the Civil War.
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