I have nothing but respect and admiration for any author who can commit some 200,000 words to paper while developing characters and a somewhat coherent plot.

And after trying it myself I can respect it even more, and would never dream of calling GFR a "total piece of crap".

That said, however, I think that the most legitimate criticsm that can be leveled at the book aside from the factual errors and some of the ridiculous actions attributed to the characters is that it just wasn't what we Godfather fans wanted.

I think we wanted a sequel that picked up the story where we left off and answered the questions which we wanted answered.