Book Review: Fall of Giants by Ken Follett

The First World War and the Russian revolution team up for Ken Follet's 'Fall of Giants'. Though it's a well-thought book, but features a lengthy set of characters, all equally complex yet captivating.

During the events of WW-I and the Russian revolution, Follet shows how the lives of five families from different countries are on stake, and they all in their failed and successful attempts jostling for better means of life. In many ways, they are connected and heading for the same doom; and interestingly the cost and impact of the war on their lives and relationships is changing them.

Orphaned Russian brothers (one crook and the other a revolutionary) are constantly vying against adverse and regimented circumstances during the war days, making them most-loved characters throughout the book. The book is prominent in depicting how the fates of people go gloomy from palace's chandeliers to murky mines. Thus, the book - Fall of Giants by ken Follet – clearly highlights the plight of innocent people caught in the grim circumstances thrown at them by the miseries of the war.

The book routes through a tapestry of time including pre and post war life: a German spy falling in love with a girl from a powerful English family; two orphans with their dead mother’s memories amid Russian protests, intervention of America's President, coal miners and the battlefields. Wartime fills for both: theme and antagonism.

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