This is the fervent conclusion to the historical epic Century Trilogy. Ken Follett, once again, showed the reason why he is regarded as one of the best all-time authors of epic action novels. If you have read his A Column of Fire and love it, you will also love this one. He poured out enough passion in this book and used his excellent storytelling ability to describe the characters properly.
Just as the author has done in the first two books of the Century Trilogy, he has continued to present the fortunes of the five intertwined families – Welsh, English, Russian, German, and American. He tells their story as they made their way to the twentieth century. Now, they are faced with a lot of economic, political, and enormous social turmoil from the 1960s through to the 1980s.
They have to pass through a lot during this period, including mass political movement, assassinations, the Vietnam War, revolution, presidential impeachment, and even the Cuban Missile crises.
As the case with Ken Follett’s books, there is a comprehensive research on the historical background of the places and characters he uses in his books. This novel is no different. He passionately gave the characters proper emotion and tone that surely befits their roles in the book.
And one interesting part of the story is the way the author presented the different historical streams. Everything was just spot on. John Lee, who provided the narrative input, also performed well. There is proper description of the characters no matter what roles they are playing. It is great that Ken Foller decided to stick with John Lee for the narration of this third book, just like in the first and second book. It gave the entire trilogy a good sense of consistency. No character was wrongly represented both in voice and diction.
