[The Thorn Birds] promises romance, sentiment, history, the appeal of a faraway setting.

You may ask: Is The Thorn Birds a good book? No, it isn't. It is, in fact, awesomely bad. The writing is amateurish, all adjectives and exclamation points. The dialogue is leaden…. The characters are mechanical contrivances that permit the plot to grind along without encountering much resistance.

To its credit, The Thorn Birds is as easy to absorb as an hour of The Bionic Woman and as addictive as popcorn, if you like popcorn…. (pp. 91-2)

Amanda Heller, in a review of "The Thorn Birds," in The Atlantic Monthly (copyright © 1977, by The Atlantic Monthly Company, Boston, Mass.; reprinted with permission), Vol. 239, No. 6, June, 1977, pp. 91-2.