What keeps The Thorn Birds from being a potboiling soap opera is the author's gift for atmosphere and description. She details animals, plants, and city and country life of Australia through several generations and contrasting regions. She includes spectacular storms, fires, and a variety of landscapes, as well as several detailed battle and war scenes, which vividly evoke a time and place which are strange and exotic to most readers.

Through McCullough, we see the desert of North Africa, the jungles of New Guinea, the labyrinthine corridors of the Vatican, and the broad sweep of the Australian plain.

In addition, and as noted by critics such as Walter demons, the novel's dialogue is very dramatic and even declamatory. While it can be said to be unrealistic, it can also be said that the relentless drama of the dialogue and the almost deus ex machina nature of events serve...