i won’t rewrite what i wrote on my blog, but you can find my review here

This is massive and intricate, but not nearly so difficult to follow as I had feared. As billed as well, has all the things that make Tolstoy great, and despite the length, nothing seems extraneous. Well, maybe nothing seems extraneous. It depends on whether you’re interested in history, as Tolstoy looked at this as an exploration of his (essentially anti-Great Man) theory of history as much or moreso than he did as a novel. What you end up with is a great historical novel that interweaves both threads(historical and personal) exceedingly well, with each complementing, explicating, and enforcing the other to wonderful effect.