Not as good as the first two books. And not because I am irrationally offended when someone doesn't praise the all mighty Ronald Reagan.

With the Viet Nam war, Kennedy's, Hippie movement, rock music, the USSR and so much else that happened post WWII to the present. This should have been a great story. However it literally felt like this book was written by another author, who basically wrote an encyclopedia that had sex scenes in it to make it interesting.

For example, I get that this book was about the sexual revolution, however, did every character have to have an affair? Even minor ones and even Martin Luther King? I felt like this was added in to keep people's interest, because the rest of the story was just not up to what I would expect from Ken Follett. It would literally go, Cuban missile crisis, end of chapter about someone's affair. Civil rights protect, fellowed by an affair. Berlin wall goes up, affair. Just got old after a while, although it did make since for some characters stories, like the Hippies, it just felt like filler when it came to JFKs and MLKs affairs, or stories about people they had affairs with.

A lot of people are complaining about the end of the book, where the civil rights activists, who have been working their whole lives to help people of color gain equal rights, are excited that Obama became president. Well that only makes sense from these characters, finally seeing a black president is something they thought would never happen. It does not mean the author is biased. In fact the author was very anti-communist.

I am neither a Democrat nor Republican, and really don't like either. And I think this book is pretty center of the line. But people in the U.S. are so used to the media being biased in favor of one team or the other, that they think anything said bad about their team, means someone is biased. Notice I said team? Well, because these two parties are really nothing more than sports teams that people blindly follow. At least that's my view, sure there are some good players, but mostly their records are pretty bad, and they both support very oppressive actions that the government is doing.

Volumul al treilea al trilogiei se concentrează mai mult pe evenimente decât pe personaje. De la criza rachetelor și până la căderea cortinei de fier autorul punctează toate evenimentele politice majore ale secolului XX. O serie foarte reușită, care m-a surprins în mod plăcut.

ريفيو مبدئي

كل عام وانتم بألف خير..نستهل قراءات العام برحلة كين فوليت التاريخية الصاخبة القوية

First 2017 Read, as the last 2 years...KEN FOLLETT & The Century Trilogy.
Because who doesn't read History..won't notice how determinedly it repeat itself.
مع ثلاثية القرن..لان التاريخ يعي�� نفسه باصرار..فقط نحن من لانتعلم
ورحلة الي الستينات ، مخاطر حرب عالمية ثالثة نووية بين امريكا والاتحاد السوفييتي ، الفرق الانجليزية الموسيقية كالبيتلز، حائط برلين ، حرب فيتنام، الحقوق المدنية للسو�� ومارتن لوثر كينج، الهيبيز في امريكا وقانون المثلية الجنسية في بريطانيا وانقلابات روسيا
الي السبعينات وعهد نيكسون وتصنته علي معارضيه وزيارته التاريخية لروسيا
الي الثمانينات والقلقلة بمدن الإتحاد السوفييتي حتي تفككه وسقوط حائط برلين

كل هذا من خلال 3 عائلات متشابكة من 3 قارات مختلفة في دراما ثرية مشتبكة بالاحداث السياسية

ربما عانت الكثير بثلث الرواية الاخير والذي لم يكن قوة الجزء الاول والثاني ولا حتي النصف الأول من هذا الجزء ، لكنها تظل رحلة تاريخية درامية تتعايش معها قل ما تجد مثل هذا الابداع والحبكة
محمد العربي
اول يناير 2017
قراءة من 21 ديسمبر 2016
الي 6 يناير 2017

O Tyranossaurus Rex


Ufa!... Até que enfim!
No limiar da eternidade fiquei eu depois de ler este calhamaço infinito!
Just kidding! He, he

Será mesmo mandatória uma forte dose de coragem para deglutir este colosso?!
Não creio!
Apesar da desencorajante lombada de lista telefónica, garanto-vos que tem enredo q.b. para não enfastiar.

Só mesmo a mestria de Ken Follet, para tornar um livro com as dimensões dum Tyranossaurus Rex numa leitura fluida e agradável.
Como sempre (quase sempre?!), Ken Follet não desilude!...

Nota: Confesso que concluí este livro há bastante tempo, o que significa que já se me varreram muitos detalhes da trama. Porém, recordo que a sua leitura me marcou pela positiva, e como considero que os bons livros são para divulgar, propus-me resenhá-lo nem que fôsse só para dizer que gostei e vale a pena. E assim fiz!

This is the third and final - and worst - installation of the "Century Trilogy" by Ken Follett. I listened to the audiobook, read with too much pomp and too little warmth by the actor, who sounded like an anchorman from the '50s.

I was enjoying the book until about half-way through, but the second part turned into a YA novel and went seriously downhill.

Be warned: there is no real, 360 degrees history here. Most of it is over-simplified, cartoonish history, as seen through heavily left-leaning eyes.

Yes, I enjoyed flashing through the Cold War period, while following the descendants of the five families that readers have been following since the first book, Fall of Giants, set against the background of WWI. Geographies included are, again, mainly the US, Russia, Germany and the UK.

But ... this is definitely NOT a book I would recommend. I give it 2 stars because it was ok to listen to, and it kept me company in my walks or car trips. But, unlike the first and second book, this third one has some very, very big issues.

THE ONLY GOOD THING: the plot is constantly gripping, and it drives you forward. Ken Follett is a plot-driven writer. It's not that he doesn't write well, it's that he cares mostly about the story. His language is only a tool. He said that he wants his language to be like a "glass pane", that you can clearly see through to the story, while when a writer uses a richer or flowery language, the glass pane is distracting the reader from the story. His favorite writers are Ian Fleming, Stephen King and the likes. In short, writers of fast-paced, action-packed stories. In fact, action scenes are where Follett really excels.

BAD: the history is accurate, but it is reported with an awfully simplistic, politically charged, stereotypical approach. What are the stereotypes about the Cuba crisis? Here you find them all. What are the stereotypes about the Watergate scandal? Here you find them all. Did Kennedy sleep around and was gossiped to love rubber ducks in his bathtub? Check and check, sleeping around and rubber ducks.

(in line with being stereotypical, Follett never mentions the heavy womanizing of Martin Luther King. Because, you know, that's something you just don't do. Check).

Not only Follett puts his own political agenda in the novel (especially in the second part of the book), he also does it so superficially, with exactly the same high-school level of historic depth you would get from a drunk in a pub, telling you how Reagan was just a murderer and Nixon was nothing but a crook.

Trust me, you will find much more historical insight in the movie Forrest Gump.

Everything is explained with the childishness of a cartoon. Even worse, it sounds like Follett's opinions are actually built on this type of cartoonish reconstruction of the events.

The WORST thing of Edge of Eternity is that, while typically good historic fiction helps you get in the skin of the people who really lived in a specific time, in this book the characters are there to make only high-school history come alive. They are not real people, they are puppets in the hands of a writer (and his many ghost writers) who seems to base his political opinions on a slim book of "World History".

Real history is the real victim of this book. It is completely forgotten.

BAD: Republicans and conservatives in general have zero positive traits. They are literally the baddies in this book. Aside from the other left-leaning narratives that Follett fully embraces, he reaches his peak when he presents the end of Communism purely as a spontaneous combustion, while explicitly describing the US and CIA foreign policy efforts during the Cold War as completely useless, as having no effect whatsoever on the the fall of Communism. Therefore, every US foreign policy operation was totally stupid and worthless. Ugh!! *pukes* Is it too much to ask for some middle ground where someone sees things in a more balanced way? The problem is that many teenagers will read Follett's own lefty narrative as if it was the only way to interpret the facts of the 20th century.

BAD: every character is driven by ideals, and almost no one by self interest. Obviously, that takes a lot away from the sense of realism. Let's just say the characters never become real, not once. They are all symbols or tools Follett uses to make his own points, or at best they are the embodiments of wikipedia bullet points about the Cold War period.

He also seems to have a real soft spot for female characters who are self-righteous and aggressively moralizing.

BAD: every single scene ends up in graphic, meticulously size-of-the-clitoris described sex. Far, far too much. Such a killer to the elegance of the overall work. Clearly a commercial decision, to sell to the lusty teens who enjoy that crap, but hey, Follett, did you forget that this really lowers the level of the book to the YA level? No, worse: it's like having the rock band Kiss jump on stage every 15 minutes while you're seeing a serious well-played drama, and having them sing one of their loud songs, red tongues sticking out and all. Real trashy!

Mr Follett, you are part of the 1% as you are already worth 45 million dollars, do you seriously need to use these trashy tricks at the expense of the book's style and elegance? Your name is today a 35 people company ... did none of these 35 ask you: "Are you sure you want to ruin this book with all those graphic sex scenes?". The only reason I can think of is, more sales, more money. I find it really sad.

But most of all, I wish you had had more respect for history, and not made it into a cartoon, parroting out the lefty version of the Cold War era.

Mais um fantástico livro de Ken Follett!
Uma verdadeira lição de História dentro de uma "estória" extraordinária.
Ken Follett traz-nos de volta as personagens fantásticas dos dois livros anteriores, continuando a saga através dos seus descendentes. E uma vez mais nos "desperta" para a História recente da Humanidade e nos "obriga" a querer saber mais!...
Um livro que recomendo a quem gosta de um bom romance histórico! ADOREI!!!

Um excelente final para uma brilhante trilogia!

Cativante e arrebatador do início ao fim!

A Grã-Bretanha perde destaque neste último volume, tendo em conta que a maioria dos acontecimentos da segunda metade do século XX se centra nos EUA e URSS, com a Alemanha pelo meio.

É incrível a forma como as personagens das diferentes famílias que acompanhamos ao longo dos três volumes se interligam. Follett faz isto como ninguém e traz-nos uma história incrível que aborda inúmeros acontecimentos históricos de forma fluída e super apelativa.

Este terceiro e último volume arranca com a construção do muro de Berlim e aborda a Guerra Fria, a segregação racial nos EUA e o Ku Klux Klan, a crise dos mísseis em Cuba, o assassínio de Kennedy e de Martin Luther King, a guerra do Vietname, o movimento hippie, Sex, Drugs & Rock'n'Roll, a Primavera de Praga, entre tantos outros temas, e termina com a queda do muro do Berlim.

Garanto-vos que aprendi mais sobre a história do século XX com esta trilogia do que em qualquer manual de História!

4 1/2 Stars(Excellent)

Another stellar entry intoe the Edge of Eternity series. Here, Follett, our master storyteller and likely top 3 historical fiction writers alive today, finish the captivating event of the century from 1950s into 1980s. We run the gamut from Vietnam, to the Cold war, the fall of the Berlin wall, and the atomic bomb. Follett's writing is quick paced, engaging, with strong characterizations, and he binds it all together in the end to give us a memorable and incredible series!

very strong first part covering roughly 1961 - 1963 (Berlin wall, fight for Civil Rights, the Cuban missile crisis), but then the novel starts scattering and after a while becomes almost an encyclopedia like recital of what happens as it follows the diverse group of characters until 1989

there are strong moments here and there but they read more like snippets than like a novel, while the political biases of the author start becoming way too visible and detract from the book (there is a ton about Nixon and later Reagan and how bad they and their entourage were and outrage as how Nixon got punished but Reagan "got away" with it, while nothing about the disastrous Carter years, very little about the disastrous Johnson Vietnam War, nothing about how Margaret Thatcher reinvigorated Britain for a generation etc); also there is nothing about Japan or China and any historical fiction that wants to cover the later part of the 20th century in the comprehensive way this book seems to be intended and basically resumes itself at the USA-USSR cold war is already failing there

overall a page turner one reads to find out what happens, but which after the first excellent maybe third, devolves into self-indulgence, lack of cohesion and political bias that becomes more and more annoying

After reading well over 3,000 pages of material....you feel totally invested in a story. At least this writer does that for me. I cared deeply about these characters. It's funny....when I read a Follett novel......I dream about the characters while I sleep at night, as if they are real people. That's how powerful this trilogy was for me. And out of the 3 this one I could most relate to, because I was born in 1959,and the things happening in it up to 2008, I saw on the news. I lived it, I experienced it.

The first week this book was first put on the shelves, we drove to Independence, MO to visit my son ,and his new wife, who live there now. We stopped at the local BARNES AND NOBLE, (take that, Amazon!), and I was hot on the trail to purchase this book....while I was deciding which book to actually purchase, (I am anal about the binding,the condition of the book jacket,etc. So I look at several copies,before I decide that this is the one), I counted 5 people either asking an employee about where the latest Ken Follett novel is, or a couple people discussing how excited they were to read it.

I will admit, this is not War and Peace material, (Matt!), or deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize for Literature,but it's enjoyable ,and engrossing all the same. Start with Fall of Giants,and Winter of the World,and then this one. Follow the families,and their struggles, through wars, political uprising,and family squabbles. Start at the beginning,and take the ride....it's a great one!

I am absolutely "converted" to Ken Follet as a writer! He is most able to take any subject and treat it with depth, historical rigor, psychological precision, and still concoct characters that stay with us long after we read the last page. So much more with this trilogy, as we follow the lives of five families through all the turmoil of the 20th Century and feel their sorrows, their hopes, see their ideals being thwarted by people who have only their interest at heart...
Loved this third book, which I somehow assumed (wrongly) would be less enticing than the two volumes dedicated to both Wars: nothing could be more wrong: Follet is capable of treating with the same genuine passion the Cold War days and once again turns up with lovable characters (and irritating ones) as larger than life as their forefathers!

Absolutely loved it!

Maria Carmo,

Lisbon 18 May 2015.