Fall of Giants by Ken Follett

Fall of Giants by Ken Follett

Published 2010 by Pan Macmillan

This 985 page beast was the first historical novel I have read.  Right from the start I loved how clearly Follett's writing is and easy the story is to follow, even though it takes place in dozens of different locations and has a handful of main characters scattered throughout the plot.  It was a nice change from other books where you have to be fully concentrated to read or you might finish a page and not know what's going on.  

One of my favorite things about the book was the way that Follett was able to intertwine character's into the stories and have them cross paths in unique and interesting way's, very smoothly and without any confusion.  Off the top of my head about four to five chapters in, he has eight main characters involved in the stories plot in their own separate way.  Each individually separated by countries, towns, and relationships.  

Another great writing technique that the author used was the way he was able to integrate his fictional character's with real life individuals like Winston Churchill, Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Woodrow Wilson and many others.  He even managed to keep real life event's in tact and include his fictional character's into the situations without skipping a beat or having to make up events.

A great example of this is from Ken Follett himself in an interview he did:

Fall of Giants includes many real historical figures such as Winston Churchill, Sir Edward Grey, Woodrow Wilson, and Lenin. How blurred are the lines between fact and fiction when it comes to portraying these well-known individuals?

I do not violate history. Where real people appear in my story, the things they do and say are usually things they really did do or say, or something very similar. For example, the fictional Fitz meets the real-life Lloyd George, and they argue about whether Zinoviev and Kamenev should be deported from Great Britain. In that scene Lloyd George uses words that are taken almost verbatim from a memo he wrote on the subject at the time.

The full interview can be found here.

Recommended to anyone who loves historical fiction, and also a great book if you are new to the genre.

Rated 4/5