Winter of
the World (Century Trilogy II)
Ken Follet
21st
to 26th September, 2012
5 Stars.
“....we
have to fight the Communists just as hard as the Fascists. They’re both evil”
The first
book of the Century Trilogy by Ken Follet, dealt with the first world war, and
the events surrounding it. This book starts in the year 1933, leads up to the
Second World War, finishing off in the year 1949. The events like the first
book, is spread over the two continents on the either side of the Atlantic.
The book is
a fast read. The prospect of reading 900 odd pages, though daunting at first,
seems easy as the pages fly away. The plot just carries from where the last
book had left it. In this edition the principle characters of the last book
were all there, but the spotlight was shone on their offspring.
The prose
also followed the pattern of the last book. Short paragraphs, and a lot of dialogues
between the characters. This was one of the best points of the book according
to me. Follet had described places, showed events happening all through
dialogues. These first person dialogues helped the book in not becoming boring.
Another
great aspect of the book was that Follet had been able to keep the interest of
the reader alive for all the main characters. There were lots of them, based in
different countries. By the end of the book, I was really curious to know what
happened to each of them.
But one
small glitch according to me was the abundance of CO INCIDENCES. The book was
full of them. Agreed, that the book wouldn’t have been as fast and as unputdownable,
if those chance encounters between the characters weren’t there. But still at
times, when, almost every character was bumping into another character that
happened to know him or her, the phrase “ITS A SMALL WORLD” seemed clichéd.
Lastly, the
book showed us, the ones who were born long after the war, the brutality of the
war. Reading the book, I felt so sad, thinking actually what people had to go through
in those times. The brutality of Nazism, the madness of Communism, and the
bloodlust of the War, made every other thing in the book pale in its comparison.
There were little or no mention of the concentration camps, but one major
event, which we seldom read about, was portrayed in the book. Action T4, the Nazi
plan to kill anyone who is “unproductive” in the fatherland was given a lot of
attention in the book.