Reviews with content warning for Miscarriage - Winter of the World

Like Fall of Giants, this is really several books at once; with separate but interconnected groups of characters spread across the UK, Germany, Russia and the US. The significance of history in this book is matched by that of the characters' more personal stories, and the balance between history and narrative is so brilliantly woven. In fact, it's the characters' individual stories that makes this so easy to read, despite its 900+ pages. The next generation from those we met in Fall of Giants takes up the narrative, but it's never unclear who anyone is thanks to Follett's gentle (but never patronising) reminders, and the cast list at the beginning of each book.

The Russian side of this story was particularly fascinating because I know so little about it, but it was incredibly disturbing to realise how much the Red Army abused their power as liberators of Germany. Assuming that the final part of the trilogy is about the Cold War, I'm intrigued to know more about this side of history.

While I love Follett's writing, this does suffer a little from a man-writing-female-characters perspective. That part of the book hasn't aged well and I did roll my eyes a few times at some of the assumptions made about women.

Content Warnings

morsa's review against another edition

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dark informative reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? N/A
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

Content Warnings

cathy_alice's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional informative inspiring sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

Content Warnings

margot_p's review against another edition

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medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated

5.0

Encore une fois, mon cœur fond ! Le deuxième livre de cette trilogie est encore mieux je pense que le premier (mais le premier est iconique !). J'aime tellement les personnages (Carla, Walter, Maud, Ethel, Daisy, Volodya, Lloyd ❤️)

Même si ça me brise le cœur, j'aime le développement (et le descente en enfer) de Grigori qui tombe de plus en plus dans le communisme. La mort de Walter m'a fait pleurer et honnêtement je ne m'en remettrai jamais 😭
Le dernier chapitre est incroyable (bien que j'aurais aimé que Maud connaisse Lloyd en sachant qu'il est son neveu...)!

Content Warnings