...later and this morning I finished reading Ken Follett's latest book "Fall of Giants". I am always so disappointed when I finish one of Mr Follett's stories! I just want them to go on forever to see happens in the lives of the characters! This is the first book of a trilogy with the next one due out in 2012 then the 3rd due out in 2014. Oh No!!!
As a hard cover with 850 pages, it wasn't the most comfy book to curl up on the lounge with, but the fabulous story line made it all worth it.
Sadly I don't think I will achieve "50 books in 2010" now though. But with a 24 hour plane trip coming up plus 5 weeks in Dublin where the weather won't be condusive to spending much time outdoors - you never know what could be achieved!
From Ken Follett's w
ebsiteFall of Giants
Published worldwide on 28 September 2010, and debuted at #1 on The New York Times' hardcover fiction bestseller list!
Fall of Giants is a magnificent new historical epic. The first novel in the Century trilogy, it follows the fates of five interrelated families – American, German, Russian, English and Welsh – as they move through the world-shaking dramas of the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the struggle for women’s suffrage.
Thirteen-year-old Billy Williams enters a man’s world in the Welsh mining pits…Gus Dewar, an American law student rejected in love, finds a surprising new career in Woodrow Wilson’s White House…two orphaned Russian brothers, Grigori and Lev Peshkov, embark on radically different paths half a world apart when their plan to emigrate to America falls afoul of war, conscription and revolution…Billy’s sister, Ethel, 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 Walter von Ulrich, a spy at the German Embassy in London….
These characters and many others find their lives inextricably entangled as, in a saga of unfolding drama and intriguing complexity, Fall of Giants 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.
As always with Ken, the historical background is brilliantly researched and rendered, the action fast-moving, the characters rich in nuance and emotion. It is destined to be a new classic.
In future volumes of the Century trilogy, subsequent generations of the same families will travel through the great events of the rest of the twentieth century, changing themselves – and the century itself. With passion and the hand of a master, Ken brings us into a world we thought we knew, but now will never seem the same again.
Flying into Dublin. Minus 7 degrees and snow. We had been laughing about how the weather was going to be when we arrived, but the reality was we were in total denial. Pretty to look at as we flew in though.
