Fall of Giants: Book One of the Century Trilogy
Fall of Giants is the first in another epic historical trilogy from Ken Follett. While the Pillars of the Earth trilogy was set over multiple centuries, Fall of Giants is placed squarely in the 20th century. The story follows five families across the world through World War I, the Russian Revolution, and women's suffrage. This trilogy felt heavier on the political history than the soapy drama than the Pillars of the Earth (though there's a bit of that as well!). While, for me, this series didn't have the same "unputdownable" quality, it's still another compelling, meticulously researched epic with richly drawn characters who bring the history alive. The books are extremely long but worth the read.
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Ken Follett’s magnificent new historical epic begins as five interrelated families move through the momentous dramas of the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the struggle for women’s suffrage.
A thirteen-year-old Welsh boy enters a man’s world in the mining pits. . . . An American law student rejected in love finds a surprising new career in Woodrow Wilson’s White House. . . . A housekeeper for the aristocratic Fitzherberts takes a fateful step above her station, while Lady Maud Fitzherbert herself crosses deep into forbidden territory when she falls in love with a German spy. . . . And two orphaned Russian brothers embark on radically different paths when their plan to emigrate to America falls afoul of war, conscription, and revolution.
From the dirt and danger of a coal mine to the glittering chandeliers of a palace, from the corridors of power to the bedrooms of the mighty, Fall of Giants takes us into the inextricably entangled fates of five families—and into a century that we thought we knew, but that now will never seem the same again. . . .