The purpose of this book is to tell a very complicated story, well enough to keep the reader wanting more. I imagines it would take me at least a week to listen to this book, yet I find I'm halfway through the third part after only two days. I feel the characters are given plenty of depth and like the other two massive tomes, this is certainly another page turner. There are many characters in this book because they are necessary in order to give the perspective of all the countries involved in the First World War. I can see myself doing the same with Fall of Giants. I have re-listened to it and World Without End dozens of times and never seem to tire of them. Pillars of the Earth was the first novel I downloaded from Audible. With passion and the hand of a master, Follett brings us into a world we thought we knew, but now will never seem the same again.

In future volumes of The Century Trilogy, subsequent generations of the same families will travel through the great events of the rest of the 20th century, changing themselves-and the century itself. As always with Ken Follett, the historical background is brilliantly researched and rendered, the action fast-moving, the characters rich in nuance and emotion. 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. 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. 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…. 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…. Gus Dewar, an American law student rejected in love, finds a surprising new career in Woodrow Wilson's White House…. Thirteen-year-old Billy Williams enters a man's world in the Welsh mining pits….

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.

Fall of Giants is Ken Follett's magnificent new historical epic.

Ken follet century trilogy