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1.9k reviews for:
La Caída de Los Gigantes (the Century 1) / Fall of Giants (the Century, Book 1)
Ken Follett
4.19 AVERAGE
1.9k reviews for:
La Caída de Los Gigantes (the Century 1) / Fall of Giants (the Century, Book 1)
Ken Follett
4.19 AVERAGE
Love this author and his books! He is my go to author for great reads!!
adventurous
dark
hopeful
informative
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Follett serves up another easy-to-read soap opera which combines genuinely interesting historical information with pot-boiler melodrama and textbook villains and heroes. Formulaic and fascinating, patronising and informative, unlikely and addictive. All of Follett's strengths and weaknesses are on display here.
A page turner! I really enjoyed the little details about what people’s lives were like back then. It really helps flesh out the details about what the climate that led to WWI was like
"Fall of Giants" tells the story of the first World War by following a large cast of characters spanning different continents, ideals, and social classes.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It has a ton of history and politics, which I love, but it also showed what the war did to individal people. Especially Les chapters really lightened up the story. At first, some of the characters seemed a bit to goody-good, but they developed as the stroy progressed and became actual people for me.
Would highly recommend!
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It has a ton of history and politics, which I love, but it also showed what the war did to individal people. Especially Les chapters really lightened up the story. At first, some of the characters seemed a bit to goody-good, but they developed as the stroy progressed and became actual people for me.
Would highly recommend!
adventurous
medium-paced
I loved, loved, loved Pillars of the Earth - and was hoping for a similar engagement with this series. Didn't quite get there. Enjoyed the story - but I felt like some of the story lines seemed a little contrived. I will read the other books in the series - but not rushing off to get them.
3.5 stars
Some quick thoughts:
1. Sometimes the political talk droned on and on...I skimmed those parts
2. There was a map in the front of the book, which I love, but several of the cities mentioned in the book were not marked on the map.
3. Ethel Williams was by far my favorite character.
I'll definitely read book 2 though, because World War II is one of my favorite historical eras to read and learn about.
Some quick thoughts:
1. Sometimes the political talk droned on and on...I skimmed those parts
2. There was a map in the front of the book, which I love, but several of the cities mentioned in the book were not marked on the map.
3. Ethel Williams was by far my favorite character.
I'll definitely read book 2 though, because World War II is one of my favorite historical eras to read and learn about.
adventurous
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I find it hard to articulate quite how much I love this book. The fact that Follet hired eight history professors to correct any mistakes just summarises quite how thoughtful he was in writing this book. It is just so rich in history, romance, destruction, loss, life, joy.
The characters were unbelievably loveable; Maud, Ethel, Billy, Gus, Rosa- Follet exquisitely creates these realistic and vastly diverse personalities.
I have no words. I just loved every single page and will recommend it to every human I know until I die.
The characters were unbelievably loveable; Maud, Ethel, Billy, Gus, Rosa- Follet exquisitely creates these realistic and vastly diverse personalities.
I have no words. I just loved every single page and will recommend it to every human I know until I die.
This is the second time I've read Fall of Giants. The first time was back in 2011, when I was forced to drop it halfway through in order to go away for a month. Needless to say, I wasn't taking this 1000 page monster with me on a trip to Kenya. I resumed when I got back, but I have always thought that I would have enjoyed it more if I'd just read it straight through. Now that I have done so, it is safe to say that the issues I had with it the first time are still there, and were not corrected by continuous reading. That said, one of the reasons I undertook this re-read was because of how disappointed I was with my Pillars of the Earth re-read and I wanted to make sure this one still held up. My opinion didn't improve, but it also didn't drop tremendously like PotE.
The biggest problem I have with this book is how brutally awkward all of the sex scenes are. And there are a lot of them. Every one of them made me either laugh or cringe (usually both), neither of which was what Ken Follett was going for, I'm sure. If there was no dialogue in the scenes, it would probably help immensely, because the conversations that take place in these moments are just SO stilted and awkward and weird. In fact, the thoughts they have during these moments are also pretty brutal. SO cringe-worthy. Also, there are some very sexually aggressive virgins in this book; women who, despite being in extremely restrictive, repressive societies, are totally sexually empowered and come across as really unrealistic. Walter thanking Maud after their dalliance in the theatre is frankly painful to read. And this time I listened to a lot of the book in audiobook format and hearing these scenes read to me by an older British man just made it all so much worse.
When I read this the first time, I also complained that the pairings often felt forced for the purposes of giving us a second generation of characters to fill out the second book. While that is still definitely happening here, I didn't find the relationships as forced this time. I remember thinking Walter and Maud felt particularly unreal last time, but this time I believed it (their super awkward sex talk notwithstanding).
I also generally liked the characters better this time around, with the exception of pretty much all of the Russian characters. Was Katerina always this manipulative? She's down on her luck the whole book, sure, but she kind of treats Grigori like garbage. And Grigori is surprisingly boring for someone who is a bigwig in the Russian army/Bolshevik uprising.
Follett does a good job summarizing a lot of history and interconnecting a lot of stories in a compelling way, but things do get a bit repetitive here and there. Things that have been described only a couple of chapters earlier are occasionally re-explained in case you've forgotten, and that took me out of it several times.
The biggest problem I have with this book is how brutally awkward all of the sex scenes are. And there are a lot of them. Every one of them made me either laugh or cringe (usually both), neither of which was what Ken Follett was going for, I'm sure. If there was no dialogue in the scenes, it would probably help immensely, because the conversations that take place in these moments are just SO stilted and awkward and weird. In fact, the thoughts they have during these moments are also pretty brutal. SO cringe-worthy. Also, there are some very sexually aggressive virgins in this book; women who, despite being in extremely restrictive, repressive societies, are totally sexually empowered and come across as really unrealistic. Walter thanking Maud after their dalliance in the theatre is frankly painful to read. And this time I listened to a lot of the book in audiobook format and hearing these scenes read to me by an older British man just made it all so much worse.
When I read this the first time, I also complained that the pairings often felt forced for the purposes of giving us a second generation of characters to fill out the second book. While that is still definitely happening here, I didn't find the relationships as forced this time. I remember thinking Walter and Maud felt particularly unreal last time, but this time I believed it (their super awkward sex talk notwithstanding).
I also generally liked the characters better this time around, with the exception of pretty much all of the Russian characters. Was Katerina always this manipulative? She's down on her luck the whole book, sure, but she kind of treats Grigori like garbage. And Grigori is surprisingly boring for someone who is a bigwig in the Russian army/Bolshevik uprising.
Follett does a good job summarizing a lot of history and interconnecting a lot of stories in a compelling way, but things do get a bit repetitive here and there. Things that have been described only a couple of chapters earlier are occasionally re-explained in case you've forgotten, and that took me out of it several times.