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elizanderson1066 's review for:
Fall of Giants
by Ken Follett
Ken Follett is no poet. His prose aren't amazing and he doesn't create life-changing characters. But bloody hell can he spin a good yarn.
His World War I epic, Fall of Giants pails into insignificance when compared to the first of his I ever read - Pillars of the Earth, which I think would make it into my top 20 favourite reads, just because of the sheer scale of his story (I was finishing that book when, aged 19, I had just received the A Level results that meant I was going to my first choice university, and by all the rules of social conduct I should have been getting VERY drunk... which I did, but only after I'd read the final few chapters of Pillars).
The first instalment of the Century trilogy is not without its faults. The characters are a little two-dimensional, though having said that, I did care enough about them to be hooked into the story, so maybe like, two and a half dimensions? He does that CLASSIC white privileged male thing of writing "strong" female characters who are kind of down-trodden but go on to achieve great things in the face of adversity, all the while causing scandal by talking about feminism and women's suffrage, but then has them all just obsessed with men and relationships for the entire book. SMH. At least you tried, Ken...
I also could have done without the overly lengthy descriptions of the various military manoeuvres of different countries during WW1 - honestly could have cut out about 200 pages here and just stuck with a gory chapter on the Somme and then moved on to the Treaty of Versailles and it still would have gotten the point across. Same can be said about the again, overly lengthy narrative about the Russian Revolution. I mean I did learn a lot though. For someone who has always struggled to keep historical facts in my head, it was nice to read about them in this format, and from what I can tell from my periodical fact-checking it was all fairly accurate. So even though it was kinda tedious, I now know who the Bolsheviks were and that's nice for me.
In general though... I'm in lockdown right now with very little to do and I wanted an epic novel which held my interest and made me want to read. Which is exactly what I got from wor Ken. Will I be reading the second two books of the trilogy? You fucking bet I will.
His World War I epic, Fall of Giants pails into insignificance when compared to the first of his I ever read - Pillars of the Earth, which I think would make it into my top 20 favourite reads, just because of the sheer scale of his story (I was finishing that book when, aged 19, I had just received the A Level results that meant I was going to my first choice university, and by all the rules of social conduct I should have been getting VERY drunk... which I did, but only after I'd read the final few chapters of Pillars).
The first instalment of the Century trilogy is not without its faults. The characters are a little two-dimensional, though having said that, I did care enough about them to be hooked into the story, so maybe like, two and a half dimensions? He does that CLASSIC white privileged male thing of writing "strong" female characters who are kind of down-trodden but go on to achieve great things in the face of adversity, all the while causing scandal by talking about feminism and women's suffrage, but then has them all just obsessed with men and relationships for the entire book. SMH. At least you tried, Ken...
I also could have done without the overly lengthy descriptions of the various military manoeuvres of different countries during WW1 - honestly could have cut out about 200 pages here and just stuck with a gory chapter on the Somme and then moved on to the Treaty of Versailles and it still would have gotten the point across. Same can be said about the again, overly lengthy narrative about the Russian Revolution. I mean I did learn a lot though. For someone who has always struggled to keep historical facts in my head, it was nice to read about them in this format, and from what I can tell from my periodical fact-checking it was all fairly accurate. So even though it was kinda tedious, I now know who the Bolsheviks were and that's nice for me.
In general though... I'm in lockdown right now with very little to do and I wanted an epic novel which held my interest and made me want to read. Which is exactly what I got from wor Ken. Will I be reading the second two books of the trilogy? You fucking bet I will.