Author: Ken Follett
Author Website: http://www.ken-follett.com/
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc
ISBN: 9780525951650
Main Characters:
Ethel Williams, former housekeeper of the Fitzherberts, Women Suffrage Organizer
William Williams, Ethel’s Brother, Miner, Soldier
Earl Fitz Fitzherbert, Conservative member of the House of Lords
Lady Maud Fitzherbert, sister of the Earl, outspoken and independent
Walter von Ulrich, German intelligence Agent, former school mate of Earl Fitzherbert, Husband of Maud Fitzherbert
Grigori Peshkov, Russian peasant who works at the Putilov Machine Works, Early Bolshevik, Russian Soldier, and Early Lenin Supporter
Gus Dewar, American Soldier, advisor to the President
Summary:
Follett takes you to a time long past with brio and razor-sharp storytelling. An epic tale in which you will lose yourself.” -The Denver Post on World Without End Ken Follett’s World Without End was a global phenomenon, a work of grand historical sweep, beloved by millions of readers and acclaimed by critics as “well-researched, beautifully detailed [with] a terrifically compelling plot” (The Washington Post) and “wonderful history wrapped around a gripping story” (St. Louis Post- Dispatch) Fall of Giants is his magnificent new historical epic. The first novel in The Century Trilogy, it follows the fates of five interrelated families-American, German, Russian, English, and Welsh-as they move through the world-shaking dramas of the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the struggle for women’s suffrage. Thirteen-year-old Billy Williams enters a man’s world in the Welsh mining pits…Gus Dewar, an American law student rejected in love, finds a surprising new career in Woodrow Wilson’s White House…two orphaned Russian brothers, Grigori and Lev Peshkov, embark on radically different paths half a world apart when their plan to emigrate to America falls afoul of war, conscription, and revolution…Billy’s sister, Ethel, a housekeeper for the aristocratic Fitzherberts, takes a fateful step above her station, while Lady Maud Fitzherbert herself crosses deep into forbidden territory when she falls in love with Walter von Ulrich, a spy at the German embassy in London… These characters and many others find their lives inextricably entangled as, in a saga of unfolding drama and intriguing complexity, Fall of Giants moves seamlessly from Washington to St. Petersburg, from the dirt and danger of a coal mine to the glittering chandeliers of a palace, from the corridors of power to the bedrooms of the mighty. As always with Ken Follett, the historical background is brilliantly researched and rendered, the action fast-moving, the characters rich in nuance and emotion. It is destined to be a new classic. In future volumes of The Century Trilogy, subsequent generations of the same families will travel through the great events of the rest of the twentieth century, changing themselves-and the century itself. With passion and the hand of a master, Follett brings us into a world we thought we knew, but now will never seem the same again.
My thoughts on this book:
I finally finished this book. The book tells the stories of events leading up to and through World War One, through the eyes of multiple families in Britian, America and Russia. Ken Follett makes it feel you are right there with the participants in the Trenches of WW1, and through the Bolshevik Revolution. I usually enjoy historical fiction especially when it deals with politics and war, this was right up my ally. I can’t wait for the next book in the Century Trilogy Series. You could already see Follett start laying the groundwork for the next book, which I’m assuming will be the build up and fighting of World War Two. Towards the end of this book you could see Walter von Ulrich dealing with Germany’s feelings about the loss of the war, and Grigori Peshkov as a commissar for Lenin. I would recommend this book to everyone, there’s suspense, action, some love stories and plenty of intrigue. So I give it an 8 out of 10
