Reviews with content warning for Torture - 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.

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beanjoles's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional informative sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

Winter of the World was a bit disappointing coming off of Fall of Giants.

Factually and historically, it's an informative and interesting book. I enjoyed learning about the lives of everyday people during this time period, particularly that of the German resistance. And I'm actually glad Follett didn't attempt to write heavily about or from the perspective of someone in a concentration camp — it would have been hard for him to do respectfully yet realistically.

That's actually my primary criticism of this book: lack of respectful and realistic representation. Having read the entire Kingsbridge series and now two of the Century of Giants trilogy, I am simply BEGGING Ken to learn how to write a woman character. I cannot describe how irritated I was reading about Carla's experience

being raped by multiple Red Army soldiers at the end of the book. Did we NEED details about how they bit her nipples??? DID WE? And of COURSE she became pregnant, because Ken is allergic to just letting women exist without sexual harm coming to them. Look, I get it: women do face sexual violence all the time. But we don't need gory details to shock readers. Sometimes the way he describes these acts almost comes off like a kink to me and I don't like it. And to have her basically accept this child of rape and be "thankful" that she got a son out of the encounter... If I hadn't been listening to an audiobook, I would have slammed the book down and walked away for a few. 🥴

. That had me really fucked up and salty for basically the remainder of the book.

Ken's treatment of queer people is better, although

we still lose Chuck partway through the story. I genuinely expected it would be Eddie, but I guess we got lucky enough to subvert that trope.

. I definitely laughed about

Chuck picking up Eddie when he's wounded and calling him "buddy." It was one of those small details that reminds you a heterosexual man is writing, lol.

I'm just plain thankful that we didn't have to watch

Robert von Ulrich get sent to a camp. It was brutal reading his partners death though.

I remain baffled that Ken has been married multiple times to women, because the sex scenes always feel so weird. This criticism applies for all his previous books that I've read, and I'm unsure how he's managed to never improve them over the years. I guess when the books sell, why bother. The descriptions of bodies and acts can feel a bit schoolboyish. Why do I need to know the size of each woman character's bush and breasts? The male characters never get this treatment. (Not that I want them to!)

I think this all boils down to Ken's inherent difficulty relating with the female characters he writes. To his credit, he does try to have them engage with the feminism topics du jour, and sometimes he achieves meaningful commentary and true-to-life reactions. But (many) other times his writing resembles that tongue-in-cheek meme about Cassandra "breasting boobily to the stairs." It's a real weakness for all of his work, and Winter of the World represented a particular low for me. I get the impression that Ken thinks making a woman character smart and strong makes up for being unable to meaningfully write about their motivations and emotional landscapes. That approach rarely pays off, and despite their intricacy and historical value, his books are worse off for it.

I'll continue on in the series because for me, the historically-grounded and well-researched stories are still worthwhile. But I could really do without the sophomoric romances between shallow characters. Here's hoping the next one is less cringe in that department.

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

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ricksilva's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional informative tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

The sequel to Fall of Giants brings in a new generation of characters, many of them the children of the main characters of the first book, as it covers the Second World War and the years preceding and following it.

As with the first volume in the series, Follett does a great job with the historical details, and he continues to be very clever in his ability to bring characters together from different backgrounds and to place them in the midst of historical events.

The soap-opera elements include some good drama and some interesting plot twists, although a few of the instances of star-crossed lovers begin to feel a bit repetitive. Still, there is enough variety to keep things engaging.

The horrors of the war are certainly not glossed over, although different characters experience them in different ways. There is a lot of war violence, and frequent references to torture, and I did find a particularly horrifying rape scene late in the story to be questionable in terms of plot necessity while it followed some tropes that are better left by the wayside.

I think the character arcs in this story didn't quite live up to those of the first book, but this story made up for that with more surprises, and a more global scope of events.

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