So I read the book when it was first published in '69 and haven't read it since. We have a beach holiday coming up so I'll throw it on the pile
The sequel books (The Godfather Returns and The Godfather's Revenge) are awful, because the author, Mark Winegarten (a FSU english comp prof, I believe) focuses most of the plot around a new character, Nick Gerace, who has many of the same biographical details as Winegarten himself. (In other words, writing himself into the story). As a result, since most of the plot revolves around the adventures of Nick Gerace, the storylines involving the actual characters from the original Godfather canon are ignored or neglected. Michael Corleone appears only intermittently, and other characters are thrown in as afterthoughts. Tom Hagen is killed off in "Revenge" in a completely stupid way, explaining at least why he is dead in "GF III", but totally evading the issue of testing Hagen's ultimate loyalty to Michael Corleone (which was originally supposed to be the central storyline of GF III.)
