Book Blurb : It is 1911. The Coronation Day of King George V. The Williams, a Welsh coal-mining family is linked by romance and enmity to the Fitzherberts, aristocratic coal-mine owners. Lady Maud Fitzherbert falls in love with Walter von Ulrich, a spy at the German Embassy in London. Their destiny is entangled with that of an ambitious young aide to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and to two orphaned Russian brothers, whose plans to emigrate to America fall foul of war, conscription and revolution. In a plot 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.
This is an epic of love, hatred, war and revolution. This is a huge novel that follows five families through the world-shaking dramas of the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the struggle for votes for women.
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This Ken Follett trilogy, The Century Trilogy, has been on my reading list for quite a few years now and it is only now that I managed to get around to reading the first book of the same, Fall of Giants. Suffice to say that the book has been worth the wait and its weight (quite literally given that is 381 pages long). I have always been a fan of historical fiction where the author manages to weave in his/her narrative with real historical events and in this trilogy, Ken Follett has dared to take on multiple events happening all over the world ranging all the way from Russia in the east to America in the west touching upon most of Europe and the UK and Wales thrown in for good measure.
While World War I, as it subsequently came to be called, forms the backdrop for most part of the book, the fact that the author creates multiple characters in different parts of the world, interweaves their lives with each other while remaining true to the historical events of the time, and also managing to create a riveting narrative which prevents readers from putting aside the book for more than a few hours at most, is testimony to the master storyteller that Ken Follett is.
What struck me the most about the book is the fact that the author goes into great details about all the political motivations behind each of the European powers that result in all of them being at loggerheads with each other leading to the war itself. Our history books (at least the ones that I read back in school) just mentioned that the assassination of an archduke in Sarajevo caused the first World War. Little did I know that there was so much machinations behind the scenes behind this world event.
I cannot wait to get to the next two books in this trilogy. After all, there are more than a few characters and world events that I can't wait to get the latest updates about. And if this book is anything to go by it will surely be another lesson in world history while being a page-turner at the same time.