As an avid reader, I can claim with a great deal of conviction that the book that has influenced me the most is the Godfather. I, to an extent, swear by the book. I'm a huge fan of the style, the concept, various ideas imbibed in the book, and above all, the characterization. Getting to the point, it is this final aspect which lets him down in the remaining books.
The characterization in the Godfather is near flawless. Everyone has their pluses and minuses, and every character has his/her reasons to explain why he/her is like how he/her is. Everyone has his shade of grey, and that makes the read so enjoyable. What I'm trying to emphasise are a couple of point. Firstly, the characters were balanced. For instance, Michael Corleone is the only character role in the history of Hollywood, to have gotten award nominations for both Best Hero Role and Best Anti Hero Role, for Al Pac's performances in The Godfather 1, and 2 respectively. Now, this clearly underlines the brilliance of Puzo's characterization (and Coppola's casting of course, Al Pac is a once in a generation actor!). Secondly, another plus of Puzo's writing is that he did not make the Don invincible. Vito Corleone, was a storehouse of brains, brilliant tactician, strategist, and a man of wits to the extent that Michael could grandly make the statement, "Why do I even need a consigliere, when I have the Don to advise me!" But the great Vito was vulnerable. He was shot, he couldn't help his son's massacre, but the biggest plus about him was his ruthlessness. When he hit back, he hit back strong, really strong.
But, among the other Puzo books I've read, which include Omerta, The Last Don, The Family, amongst others, I've found recurring themes, and awful characterization. In The Last Don, the Don is some kind of God. He doesn't make a mistake. I loved the storyline of the Last Don, but that doesn't save the characterization one bit. The most irritating part being, after the last scintillating 80 pages, the last page said, this was all the plan of the Don. The implication was the Don had masterminded 20 years of killings , and everything had panned out according to his plans, and eventually after 20 years of staying underground and doing all the masterminding, his enemies were all eliminated. Come on, get more realistic!
As with the Family, it's about an 'Anti-Pope's' want for power, and for which he kills the ruling Pope, he wants power to remain in his blood, so he makes his daughter mate with his son, as his daughter, who is the most powerful of children, feels unexplained love and loyalty to her brother, as apparently a female has unexplained love and loyalty to the man to whom she loses her virginity. What crap I say! In his enthusiasm to talk about the power of the Borgias, Puzo seemed to have lost the art of writing, meaning there was no suspense element in the story, all the story dealt with was betrayals, and killings, and of course incestual relationships.
Omerta was a classic I must admit, but again, it was too repetitive in the sense that, it talked about the Dons wanting to legalise stuff over America. Though it was an amazing story, and considered by many to have a storyline on par with, or even better than the Godfather, Omerta is a book which could have done far better if it had been part of the Godfather franchise. In fact, all the 'Don' stuff, could have come out as one single franchise, that of the Godfather's. What it'd have done is skyrocketed the sales and at the same time, there wouldn't be something weird about all the repetitiveness.
Nevertheless, Puzo is a stud, else one couldn't have created something like Godfather. Just that it is a little sad, that he couldn't quite realize his total potential and worth.
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