Winter of the World

by Ken Follett

English language

Published Aug. 26, 2014

ISBN:: 978-0-451-46822-2

(39 reviews)

Winter of the World is a historical novel written by the Welsh-born author Ken Follett, published in 2012. It is the second book in the Century Trilogy. Revolving about a family saga that covers the interrelated experiences of American, Russian, German and British families during the 20th century. The novel follows the second generation of those families, born to the main characters of the first novel, Fall of Giants, and is followed by a further generation of those families in the third and final book in the series, Edge of Eternity. The story starts in 1933, with the Nazi seizure of power, includes World War II, and concludes in 1949 in the early stages of the Cold War.

16 editions

nerd teacher [books] reviewed Winter of the World by Ken Follett (The Century Trilogy, #2)

He writes plot to be shocking and doesn't care about its impacts.

1 star

Content warning Discussion of sexual assault and Nazis.

Follett really needs to learn not to use things for shock-value if he's not willing to discuss the consequences; he uses rape of German citizens by the Red Army to advance some strange half-story (which fizzles out immediately because look how amazing Werner really is, raising his "Oriental looking" stepson!), and he never once comments on the feelings that Carla (the victim) would actually be feeling.

He spends so much time studying the history that he forgets women, children, queer, and people of colour are ... also people. And that's infuriating.

He barely even discusses why the NKVD and other secret police are terrible, only making those mentions in passing through Volodya's "I don't like them" moments. He doesn't even comment on the fact that treason is an offence punishable by death; he just lets it happen to Willi Frunze and his wife Alice. No commentary, nothing.

The book is full of details but many of them aren't used in conjunction with how they genuinely would have affected people of all sorts. Joanne's death was absolutely pointless; there was very little story development surrounding it. She could've easily lived, and the story would've been the same (Woody took pictures of Pearl Harbor, got a job -- Joanne's death did very little to halt that). Chuck could've survived, and his death did nothing for the rest of the novel. Walter, even though his death could've meant something, did almost nothing other than push Carla farther into resisting the Nazis (which is good).

And Erik literally had no function as a character. He both saw the light (telling his mother and sister how right they were and how sorry he was) and then immediately rejected it (which is uncharacteristic), and I can't even make sense of that.

It's like Follett creates far too many people for a story all at once when he could make multiple books and then loses sight of who those characters really were. This happens in Fall of Giants over and over again, and it happens more frequently in Winter of the World.

tivasyk reviewed Winter of the world by Ken Follett (Century trilogy -- bk. 2)

Review of 'Winter of the world' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

в літературному сенсі — гидотна халтура на рівні поганенького фанфіку... але відірватися неможливо!

Daniel Darabos reviewed Winter of the world by Ken Follett (Century trilogy -- bk. 2)

Review of 'Winter of the world' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

It's still a good book, but I liked Fall of Giants better in many ways:

I felt like Fall of Giants explained what caused the war. Those evil aristocrats! I mean a world war is surely never down to one cause, but Fall of Giants felt like a solid criticism of aristocracy. From 13-year-old miners to knocking up 17-year-old maids to hanging peasants to sending people to their deaths on the battlefield, it becomes 100% clear that aristocracy was a bad idea and had to be stamped out.

Fall of Giants also explained fairly well why the ideal of communism could not become reality. The infighting between communist factions is a good (tragic) story.

This thread continues in Winter of the World, and I liked the Spanish theater. What happens with Stalin is made less clear, but still okay I think.

But I felt like the story in Germany did not dig deep enough. The evil nazis just appeared out of nowhere! They spring up without explanation in London too, but in the (awesome) Battle of Cable Street they are beaten for good.

There is a bit of implication of capitalists betting on nazism as defense against communism. But while I got the impression from Fall of Giants that aristocracy was 90% responsible, in Winter of the World I felt like capitalists were maybe 10% responsible. But it doesn't offer an explanation for the other 90%.

In all I felt like Fall of Giants was fine with condemning aristocrats, since they are gone now. But Winter of the World pulls its punches when it comes to Americans or capitalism, since they are still here. No mention of internment camps for Japanese. No mention of fire bombing of Japan. The Wikipedia article on the Manhattan Project focuses more on the interesting parts than Winter of the World.

In general I feel like the book could have visited more interesting parts of the war. Millions starved in India. Japanese troops committed atrocities in China. Why not take a look. The book doesn't even visit nazi death camps. I feel like I read through a thousand pages and still missed all the vital organs of WW2.

Eric Lawton reviewed Winter of the World by Ken Follett

Review of 'Winter of the World' on 'Storygraph'

4 stars

Makes life under dictatorships more real.
Good historical novel covering the rise and fall of Hitler and Stalin, to 1949.
Well connected to actual history, covering England & Wales, USA, Russia, Germany and Spanish civil war. The sexism and racism is less than you might expect from a white man of the era and some can be considered a deliberate depiction of how things were. There is still a good attempt at showing how some strong women influenced events and a few vignettes of one black woman's life.
Very easy reading but a nice complement to the more personal aspects of the sweep of history during a terrifying period.
See my previous review of the previous book in the Century trilogy, covering WWI. Next volume starts when history ends for me and becomes real life.

Gossamerchild reviewed Winter of the World by Ken Follett (The Century Trilogy, #2)

Review of 'Winter of the World' on 'Storygraph'

3 stars

The second book in the Century Trilogy, this book takes place right before, during, and after World War II. I'm not really sure why I find these books so compelling. The writing is very mediocre. For example, in the beginning of the book, Lloyd Williams and his mother are visiting friends in Berlin, during some of the earliest of Hitler's crackdowns on democracy (and the Jewish people, of course). When he sees the horror, Lloyd thinks to himself, "Oh no, what if fascism comes to England?" He proceeds to have this same exact thought, only worded differently, at least 6 different times throughout this first section (alright, that may be a little bit exaggerated, but only because I didn't take the time to count how many times he actually thought it). The repetition was completely unnecessary and made reading the book tedious at times. The fact that I remember that detail after 900+ pages of text is pretty impressive. Overall, I really enjoyed the book. Follett is great at setting up a scene, and the historical parts of it are really intriguing. He's just terrible at character development (they're all pretty...well, not one-dimensional, but stock, I guess) and stringing sentences together. I think my biggest problem is that the writing seems...juvenile, or underdeveloped. There aren't a lot of complex thoughts or sentences. Still, I enjoyed it and will read the last one.