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.