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In late September Ken Follett released his most recent novel, “Fall of Giants.” I had been awaiting its debut for quite some time as anyone who regularly reads this blog knows he is my favorite author. I hate to say it, but I don’t like it. I don’t dislike it but I am certainly not charged with the usual sense of elation that urges me to seek out my friends and recommend this book.
It’s not a bad book. In fact as far as I am concerned it’s a great book. It is well crafted and of course as always Follett seems to develop some really deep characters that every reader can understand and appreciate. The problem I personally find with it is that it is bloated. Follett is a stickler for detail and there are many who appreciate that. I suppose that to a point I appreciate his diligent research especially concerning historical accuracy. But where the book becomes bloated is in his description of clothing. I don’t really need, let alone want, to know what the person was wearing when the only real point of the passage is to convey an element of the plot. It seems that for every piece of dialogue between two or more people Follett writes just as many paragraphs to explain what they were wearing as he does to advance the plot.
I bet I read the word “waistcoat” at least three hundred times throughout the course of the novel as Follett would stop to describe the characters’ apparel to the point that it really became quite irritating. I am going to plead ignorance and admit that I don’t even know what a man’s waistcoat is but I suspect it is what you and I would call a vest. I may or may not be correct in this assumption but it’s not enough of a concern for me to look it up. All I know is that in the early Twentieth Century it seems that everyone and their brother had several of different colors and textures and style as pointed out by Follett.
Now that I’ve bitched about the abundant description of clothing in the book let me move on and talk about the one other thing I didn’t like and then I will move on to the stuff I really did enjoy. The book takes place from 1914 – 1919, so we are taking about the WWI era. I enjoy historical fiction, thus why Follett is my favorite author. The book is supposed to address the plight of five different groups of people but probably one third of the book gives an almost minute by minute account of the Bolshevik Revolution. I think he dwelled on that aspect of the story far too long. But that is just my opinion and there are probably other readers who will state that was their favorite portion of the book. So now I can move on.
Character development is what Follett does best in my opinion. He paints the most detailed characters you can imagine and as they undergo changes they do so very subtly. So when one character goes from being a really good guy to a total bastard it’s not something that happens in two pages but rather over the course of a hundred or so pages and because the change is so subtle it is even more believable.
As always, Follett’s attention to detail and historical accuracy (except as noted above) is a very attractive aspect of his work. The book’s opening pages describe the day to day trials of a Welsh coal miner. The depth and texture allow you to find yourself totally engrossed in the atmosphere. Read ten pages about the plight of Welsh coal miners in 1914 and you will quickly realize that your job does not suck nearly as bad as you had imagined.
I’m not going to go on and on because I don’t want to risk any plot spoilers. Despite what I said above I guess I would go ahead and recommend this book to my friends because if you can get past the fashion reports and the Bolsheviks the book really is a pretty good read, probably far better than the stuff hacked out by those cookie cutter authors like James Patterson and Patricia Cornwell who write a new book every 11 minutes.
I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that this book is the first in a trilogy that will deal with these same five families and their offspring over a one hundred year period. So keep that in mind if you decide to give it a shot.
It’s not a bad book. In fact as far as I am concerned it’s a great book. It is well crafted and of course as always Follett seems to develop some really deep characters that every reader can understand and appreciate. The problem I personally find with it is that it is bloated. Follett is a stickler for detail and there are many who appreciate that. I suppose that to a point I appreciate his diligent research especially concerning historical accuracy. But where the book becomes bloated is in his description of clothing. I don’t really need, let alone want, to know what the person was wearing when the only real point of the passage is to convey an element of the plot. It seems that for every piece of dialogue between two or more people Follett writes just as many paragraphs to explain what they were wearing as he does to advance the plot.
I bet I read the word “waistcoat” at least three hundred times throughout the course of the novel as Follett would stop to describe the characters’ apparel to the point that it really became quite irritating. I am going to plead ignorance and admit that I don’t even know what a man’s waistcoat is but I suspect it is what you and I would call a vest. I may or may not be correct in this assumption but it’s not enough of a concern for me to look it up. All I know is that in the early Twentieth Century it seems that everyone and their brother had several of different colors and textures and style as pointed out by Follett.
Now that I’ve bitched about the abundant description of clothing in the book let me move on and talk about the one other thing I didn’t like and then I will move on to the stuff I really did enjoy. The book takes place from 1914 – 1919, so we are taking about the WWI era. I enjoy historical fiction, thus why Follett is my favorite author. The book is supposed to address the plight of five different groups of people but probably one third of the book gives an almost minute by minute account of the Bolshevik Revolution. I think he dwelled on that aspect of the story far too long. But that is just my opinion and there are probably other readers who will state that was their favorite portion of the book. So now I can move on.
Character development is what Follett does best in my opinion. He paints the most detailed characters you can imagine and as they undergo changes they do so very subtly. So when one character goes from being a really good guy to a total bastard it’s not something that happens in two pages but rather over the course of a hundred or so pages and because the change is so subtle it is even more believable.
As always, Follett’s attention to detail and historical accuracy (except as noted above) is a very attractive aspect of his work. The book’s opening pages describe the day to day trials of a Welsh coal miner. The depth and texture allow you to find yourself totally engrossed in the atmosphere. Read ten pages about the plight of Welsh coal miners in 1914 and you will quickly realize that your job does not suck nearly as bad as you had imagined.
I’m not going to go on and on because I don’t want to risk any plot spoilers. Despite what I said above I guess I would go ahead and recommend this book to my friends because if you can get past the fashion reports and the Bolsheviks the book really is a pretty good read, probably far better than the stuff hacked out by those cookie cutter authors like James Patterson and Patricia Cornwell who write a new book every 11 minutes.
I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that this book is the first in a trilogy that will deal with these same five families and their offspring over a one hundred year period. So keep that in mind if you decide to give it a shot.
