It's more than Downton Abbey with cannon

No. Not that one.

From The Guardian, a self-help guide to Tolstoy:

The book has the worst opening sentence of any major novel, ever. It also has the very worst closing sentence by a country mile, which you will have to read four times before deciding that its proposition is perfect nonsense. In between, its greatness goes without saying: what sometimes gets forgotten is that it is not just great, but also the best novel ever written – the warmest, the roundest, the best story and the most interesting.

It’s quite a long novel, but not absurdly long. Proust is twice the length. Nor is it at all difficult. You think it’s a challenge? Ha, ha – The Man Without Qualities is a challenge, and it took me 17 years to get to the end of Joseph and his Brothers. You’ll read War and Peace in 10 days, maximum. Many people find the first 100 pages dauntingly full of characters, and only then does it seem to smooth out and become lucid. Tolstoy has immense care for his readers, and most of his challenges are challenges of sympathy, not of intricate understanding. (I once read War and Peace on the beach – the elegant clarity of style and the concision of each chapter made it perfect. You could read for five minutes with interest, or for three absorbed hours.) To almost everyone’s amazement, by the time they reach the end of the First Epilogue, with its overwhelming sense of life continuing and proliferating, new possibilities of thought opening up, any reader will probably wish that this marvellous book could go on for ever.