Book Review: Fall of Giants

I realized last week when I did my review of The Girl You Left Behind, that I never did my review of World Without End, that took me a couple of weeks to read since it was just under 1,000 pages.

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World Without End is another Ken Follett book (if you haven't read Pillars of the Earth you need to!), but this book is part of a trilogy, and specifically centers around World War I.

MG had read it and highly recommended it, and since it was by Ken Follett, I jumped on board (plus I got it for free from MG's Kindle which was another win!)

The Goodreads synopsis (it's lengthy, but so is this book):
This is an epic of love, hatred, war and revolution. This is a huge novel that follows five families through the world-shaking dramas of the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the struggle for votes for women. It is 1911. The Coronation Day of King George V. The Williams, a Welsh coal-mining family, is linked by romance and enmity to the Fitzherberts, aristocratic coal-mine owners. Lady Maud Fitzherbert falls in love with Walter von Ulrich, a spy at the German Embassy in London. Their destiny is entangled with that of an ambitious young aide to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and to two orphaned Russian brothers, whose plans to emigrate to America fall foul of war, conscription and revolution. In a plot of unfolding drama and intriguing complexity, "Fall Of Gaints" moves seamlessly from Washington to St Petersburg, 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.

There are so many characters in the book that sometimes it gets a bit confusing (I had a hard time remembering who everyone was in the beginning). But, everyone is so intertwined at different parts of the book...people you'd never guess would come in contact, do. I love how Ken Follett weaves people throughout his books. He give such good details, it's as if you're right there with them. And since his books take place over years, you really fall in love with the characters (and really really hate some others).
I liked that I learned a lot about World War I through this book, which was much more interesting than just reading it in a history book (obviously these characters weren't real, but the events happening around them were, and it gives a life-like representation of what happened). 

I will say my favorite Ken Follet book is still Pillars of the Earth, but this one is still very very good.

I'm definitely going to be reading the second book in this series, Winter of the World, which picks up where this book left off and goes into World War II. I'm already so invested in these characters, I can't wait to see what happens to them next!