“Winter of the World” by Ken Follett
I'm always going to be nervous about a sequel to a novel I loved as much as I loved Fall of Giants. But this is an instance where you don't need to worry. What we have with Winter of the World isn't so much a sequel but rather a continuation of the same story with no drop in quality.
Winter of the World picks up right where the first book left off, as its five interrelated families—American, German, Russian, English, Welsh—enter a time of enormous social, political, and economic turmoil.
Carla von Ulrich, born of German and English parents, finds her life engulfed by the Nazi tide. . . American brothers Woody and Chuck Dewar, each with a secret, take separate paths to momentous events, one in Washington, the other in the bloody jungles of the Pacific. . . . English student Lloyd Williams discovers in the crucible of the Spanish Civil War that he must fight Communism just as hard as Fascism. . . . Daisy Peshkov, a driven American social climber, cares only for popularity and the fast set, until the war transforms her life, while her cousin Volodya carves out a position in Soviet intelligence that will affect not only this war—but the war to come.
As I got into this book, it became clear that I wasn't reading something new. This was a continuation of Fall of Giants.
That seems kind of obvious when I write it out. It's the next book in a planned trilogy. But while some trilogies feel like three separate books, each telling its own story as part of the whole, this feels different. Yes, we've moved from the previous protagonists to focus on their children, but it doesn't feel like there's need a gap. The story flows.
I put this down to the fact that the nature of this story is how the politics of the twentieth century affected these families over time. And both politics and family are things that simply keep going, whether we're paying attention or not.
The change in characters is handled masterfully. The previous characters aren't forgotten, merely demoted from protagonists to side characters. And it works, mirroring how one generation hands the reigns to the next. Each of them still has their own lives. It's simply our point of attention that's shifted.
We've moved on from the politics of the First World War. Now the world faces the consequences of those years. The Soviet Union grows in power, and the deprivations that followed the Great War have sowed the seeds of Fascism. The world has changed, but while the old empires whose pride drove the world to war have fallen, the new powers that have risen to replace them have inherited the same motives.
As a history buff, I love how Follett doesn't simply focus on the Nazis and the parts of the Second World War that were fought in Europe. The plot begins in the thirties, focusing on how these problems arose. The war didn't just happen. It simply became inevitable due to the actions of those in power in the years leading up to it. The Spanish Civil War. The way the Western nations let their hatred of Communism prevent them from facing Fascism. And the actual level of support the Nazis had in Britain and America at the time.
In fact, there is minimal depiction of the events we expect to see in stories from this period. While Pearl Harbour is a major event, personally affecting several characters, things like D-Day and the European conflict get only passing mentions. Because Follett isn't interested in telling yet another war story. We're seeing the world move forward, as witnessed by the current generation. This is about the characters, each of them expertly marshaled to give us the full experience of living through this period in time.
I loved Winter of the World just as much as I enjoyed its predecessor. Once again, it's Follett at this best. There might be a little too much exposition at points for those with a little less interest in history than me, but never enough to slow down the action.
