Fall of Giants ★★★★★

Fall of Giants (The Century Trilogy, #1) - Ken Follett ★★★★★ 1008 pgs

I really enjoyed this story. For the first time ever I've been interested by the events of WWI. It does read like a fictional account of a historical text book, but the great thing about the story is the way that it's woven together. You see how each and every piece fits together and influences the events of others. Texts tend to complete one subject before discussing another, making it so that different pieces and actions don't always correlate correctly in your mind. You understand the principles of everything from texts, but after reading Fall of Giants there are no grey areas about how everything falls into place.

The story is aptly named, The Fall of Giants, referring to the fall of the great European nations. Excuse the language, but the story presents the cluster f*** of events leading up to WWI, the war itself, the Russian Revolution, and then lightly touches on events in the early 20's. While most other historical fiction novels about the era give you a glimpse into what life was like for one particular character, this book follows multiple people so that you can learn about the working class, nobility, England, Wales, Russia, Germany, and the United States. While some people might get confused with so many main characters and perspectives, I found it to be the thing that made the book stand out. It was the best possible way in which to interconnect many of the events of the period and to see things that were going on simultaneously time wise.