SPOILERS **** SPOILERS **** SPOILERS ****



OK people, back after about a year off (??) but I just happened to be doing some very early shopping at the local bigbox, and picked up a copy of "Revenge" at a big discount.

So I tore through it yesterday, speed-skimming it, and I must say I have very, very mixed feelings so far.

First, the book seemed overly fixed on resolving the Nick Gerace storylne from "Returns." Frankly as much as anything it seemed more like a book about Nick Gerace than the Corleones.

That ticked me off, because while overall I liked "Returns" OK -- didn't love it, but didn't vehemently hate it as much as many here or other reviewers seemed to -- to me, the main challenge to any writer basing a new work on the Corleone Saga HAS to be how to advance and integrate the unresolved storylines of the characters already established in the canonical works, to come up with plausible plotlines which would fit in the existing continuity.

By far, the biggest unresolved storyline from "The Godfather, Part II" (and, by omission, the failure of "Part III") was the issue of Tom Hagen's loyalty to Michael Corleone. Toward the end of Part II, that loyalty was starting to fray a bit around the edges. It was clearly being foreshadowed by Puzo and FFC toward the end of Part II that Hagen's loyalty might not be as unconditional as it had appeared to be, and both Michael and Tom had reasons to question how loyal he would ultimately be.

So to me, the demise of Hagen in "Revenge" was a HUGE disappointment -- a fundamental core character in the Puzo/FFC continuity was written out simply as a plot device to advance the adventures of Nick Gerace (who frankly I did not personally give a $#$# about, since he was not an established character in the canon). Hagen's death, in mid-1964, also comes too soon to match up with the continuity established in "Part III" -- Hagen is dead in Part III, but the implication I always got from watching the movie is that his death had been somewhat recent, not last week, but not 16 years ago as the "Revenge" storyline now places it.

There were a few other things, I can't recount in detail, that "Revenge" seemed to just totally ignore "Part III" as canon, perhaps just pretending that it hadn't happened.

The storylines of the Corleone children were also jumbled up. We didn't really see what happened to Sonny's older sons (who were toddlers in Part I, visited Vito's bedside, etc etc.) It has been presumed they moved away with Sandra, and did not pursue life in "the family," but there's still a question if Sonny's legitimate sons would want to get involved with the family as his illegitimate son Vincent does in Part III.

I will have to read it over and let it soak in. Some parts were OK, but again I felt it dwelled way too much on what happened with Nick Gerace and not enough on the Corleone Family.