Review: Fall of Giants

Fall of Giants by Ken Follett
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Hooter: A look into life in the midst of World War One from aristocratic homes, mining towns, battlefields and factories from all the countries directly involved.

Ken Follett writes humongous epics (this one is sub 1000 pages) but they make for quick reads as they are fast paced and capture so many perspectives. He manages to get you invested in all the characters who have a 1% probability of crossing paths and yet they do time and again in very fortuitous yet believable circumstances. He instills life into fictional characters against the backdrop of history often quoting real life incidents as a close up spectator and throwing in a few real individuals for good measure. This is the baseline of good historical fiction.

Fall of Giants traces its origin from a covert get together in a tiny Welsh town of highly placed diplomats who soon find their countries at odds with the beginning of World War I. Our history textbooks make WWI seem like a blink of an eye event, here I realize how the years passed by. Key protagonists involves families that are American, English, Welsh, Russian and German across various classes and backgrounds capturing elements of women suffragette, Russian revolution, World War I, Parliamentary drama, Americans entering and of course a lot of battlefield sequences from Russian , German, English and American vantage points. Interspersed with all of these historical events are the growth journeys of Grigori who is selfless, his brother Lev who is selfish, Maud who is a rebel amongst aristocrats who bonds with Ethel a rebel amongst the common folk yet the class divide finally does separate them. The tension is high amongst families along varying issues of morality and ethics , new versus old and all of this makes for a fine epic.

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