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4.19 AVERAGE
4.19 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
informative
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This was a re-read for me, and I enjoyed it just as much this time around. Probably the best WWI fiction books I've read. The author claims the historical events are accurate and if so this books makes clear the events that led to WWI and provides insight to a lot of different points of view. The characters and story lines were also very compelling, so much so that the almost-1,000 page book doesn't drag at all.
"Fall of Giants" is the first book in an indicated century trilogy. It begins in 1911 and ends in 1923. We follow several families from different walks of life and different countries: England, Germany, Russia, the United States. Europe is on the brink of a new world war. When it is finished, all the major royal families in Europe have lost their thrones, except for George V of England. This book is, despite the many story lines, easy to read and engaging. It's not top-notch literature, there are a few too many clichés for that. I loved it nonetheless and really hope there will be more.
Great read! If you enjoy historical fiction then you will love this book on WW1. Great characters, constant action, and a super easy read for being ~1000 pages.
The characters were interesting but it tended to get bogged down and drag. It could have been a good 200 pages shorter. This is the first in a trilogy but i don't think I'm up for the next one.
Loved this book. Great historical fiction. Love how the author ties the different families/events together. Looking forward to the next book.
A decently interesting story, written rather poorly.
The three stars are more of a 2.5 than a full 3.
Attributive modifiers are repetitive and somewhat unimaginative; every third female is ravishing, the most positive quality of a person or situation is that they are wonderful.
The sentences are cluttered with redundancies. The reader is force-fed every morsel of information, to a point where almost nothing is left for deduction. The entirety of the 941 pages reads as follows:
"'Mrs Jevons suggested which other rooms should be opened up, and i've wrote it down by here.'
The phrase 'by here' was a local expression, pronounced like the Bayeux Tapestry. It was a redundancy, meaning exactly the same as 'here'."
"'It's true,' Gramper said. 'Cara was always the pretty one – just like her mother.' Mam's name was Cara."
This overcontextualizing almost sounds condescending. Is the reader really not able to figure this out on their own?
Woodrow Wilson had bad teeth, 'by here' was/is a peculiarity of a rural Welsh vernacular, Lenin dressed badly. The narrator hardly fails to mention it in any episode involving the particular character, over and over again. The setting is not built upon by seamlessly interwoven details of the historical here-and-now, but rather conjured up as a makeshift backdrop of slapdash bits of information forced on the reader at every possible instance.
"'So canaille,' she said disdainfully. This was a snobby expression she had picked up in Europe that meant low-class."
The above passage, together with a significant number of others, could have been taken from an eighth-grade writing assignment. It is rather difficult to believe it had not been picked up in editing.
Differentiating between the social groups is done awkwardly (you men, us conservatives), with a bit of a 'me Tarzan, you Jane' ring to it.
The scenes that are supposed to suggest romantic and/or sexual intimacy are base, crude and highly fantastical. Every woman given any length of text is a wanton seductress, either overtly or covertly. Some passages I would rush through as fast as I could, for fear of someone looking over my shoulder and judging my reading habits by the crudeness of the page I was on at the time. It was not the vulgarity that made it disturbing. The problem was in the childish language of a completely uninformed portrayal of physical intimacy that sounds more as someone’s personal fantasy than actually possible human interaction.
Yet another one that reads as a draft rather than a fully edited version for publication.
The style is awkward, cumbersome at times, and it interferes with the reading experience.
Anyone who is even remotely familiar with the figures and events of the early-20th-century Europe may as well skip this one.
The three stars are more of a 2.5 than a full 3.
Attributive modifiers are repetitive and somewhat unimaginative; every third female is ravishing, the most positive quality of a person or situation is that they are wonderful.
The sentences are cluttered with redundancies. The reader is force-fed every morsel of information, to a point where almost nothing is left for deduction. The entirety of the 941 pages reads as follows:
"'Mrs Jevons suggested which other rooms should be opened up, and i've wrote it down by here.'
The phrase 'by here' was a local expression, pronounced like the Bayeux Tapestry. It was a redundancy, meaning exactly the same as 'here'."
"'It's true,' Gramper said. 'Cara was always the pretty one – just like her mother.' Mam's name was Cara."
This overcontextualizing almost sounds condescending. Is the reader really not able to figure this out on their own?
Woodrow Wilson had bad teeth, 'by here' was/is a peculiarity of a rural Welsh vernacular, Lenin dressed badly. The narrator hardly fails to mention it in any episode involving the particular character, over and over again. The setting is not built upon by seamlessly interwoven details of the historical here-and-now, but rather conjured up as a makeshift backdrop of slapdash bits of information forced on the reader at every possible instance.
"'So canaille,' she said disdainfully. This was a snobby expression she had picked up in Europe that meant low-class."
The above passage, together with a significant number of others, could have been taken from an eighth-grade writing assignment. It is rather difficult to believe it had not been picked up in editing.
Differentiating between the social groups is done awkwardly (you men, us conservatives), with a bit of a 'me Tarzan, you Jane' ring to it.
The scenes that are supposed to suggest romantic and/or sexual intimacy are base, crude and highly fantastical. Every woman given any length of text is a wanton seductress, either overtly or covertly. Some passages I would rush through as fast as I could, for fear of someone looking over my shoulder and judging my reading habits by the crudeness of the page I was on at the time. It was not the vulgarity that made it disturbing. The problem was in the childish language of a completely uninformed portrayal of physical intimacy that sounds more as someone’s personal fantasy than actually possible human interaction.
Yet another one that reads as a draft rather than a fully edited version for publication.
The style is awkward, cumbersome at times, and it interferes with the reading experience.
Anyone who is even remotely familiar with the figures and events of the early-20th-century Europe may as well skip this one.
My expectation before starting this book was that it would rival the storytelling of Pillars of the Earth. I don't think it quite was up to par with that, but it came pretty close. The setting was less interesting because the history is more well known, so the interest came mostly from the characters. We got a variety of characters - male/female and from vastly different classes. I didn't like how they all ended up having control in a certain part of the war, as this seemed unlikely, but that's nitpicking. This book kept me constantly interested and by the end I really hated Fitz, so Follett did well with character development. I've got the next in the series; I'm looking forward to reading it!