Fall of Giants

Book One of the Century Trilogy

audio cd

Published Aug. 28, 2014 by Penguin Audio.

ISBN:
978-1-61176-342-3
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4 stars (6 reviews)

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.

Five families, American, German, Russian, English, and Welsh, move through the dramas of the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the struggle for women's suffrage. The plot contains profanity, graphic sexual situations, and violence. Book #1

27 editions

reviewed Fall of Giants by Ken Follett (Century -- bk. 1)

Review of 'Fall of Giants' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

This is one of Ken Follett's epic multi-year, many different characters historical tales that I have always enjoyed so much. Fall of Giants covers the time from 1914 to 1923, and you get to experience World War I from the PoV of characters in England, Wales, Russia, Germany and the USA. Their lives are all oddly intertwined. I don't usually read war novels, but I thought the way Follett breaks down the events of the war made for very interesting reading. I was particularly interested in reading about the Bolshevik revolution in Russia in 1917, and Europe's responses to that.

The characters are interesting, but stay a bit one-dimensional. I thought that was most obvious in the case of Fitz, who represents British nobility. Impregnates the housekeeper, and all in all a non-sympathetic character. But it's hard to have any feelings concerning him at all, because he is all so …

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