Getting a bit chilly....

I've recently been reading alot on several blogs about reading challenges. It seems like a good idea if you need some motivation to get through their massive piles of books. For me, I dont think that I could do it, simply because I have a great deal of trouble keeping track of my books. I have enough trouble updating this because I tend to blast through books so quickly at times that I move on to the next one and its only the really outstanding books that stick in my brain.

I have developed a very bad habit of clearing my memory warehouse of things that I dont think I need to remember anymore in order to fit more in. 

Well with the sudden shift to super cold weather it made me think of Ken Folletts new book Winter of the World that came out last week. A very good friend had lent me the first in the trilogy; Fall of Giants a week before. Its a book nearly a thousand pages long and the first chapter seems to be about mining in Wales. I'll be honest that I did not think that I would get through it.

I have never been happier to be wrong.

It was a great book and then I was in luck that only three days later Winter of the World was released and so I rushed out and purchased it.

 The book follows the children of the characters from Fall of Giants and the challenges that they face.

The book starts in 1933 and shows how fascism rooted itself in Germany through fear and intimidation. The book quickly jumps through the 30's and introduces the reader to the fight against fascism in Britain and the clash of communism and fascism in the Spanish Civil War, finally leading to WWII, from the Blitz, to Pearl Harbour, D-Day and the Pacific conflict and how all of these things affected the individuals in the books story.

This is not a book about war, it is a book about people. The brilliant thing about Winter of the World is that because the book takes place over so many years, the characters that you are introduced to at the beginning go through so many changes throughout. So people who you might take an instant dislike to, by the end have matured and become characters that you deeply care about. And of course, characters that you may have liked at first have been shaped by their situations into very dark people.

I read a review of this book that says that Winter of the World could be read on its own. I agree to that book to a point as you can read it on its own and it becomes more about the historical events and how they are viewed from the different individuals perspective. However, if you have read Fall of Giants then it becomes more about the people and how you will look at the children of the characters that you loved in the first tale and want their descendants to do well, or badly in some cases.

Sadly it will probably be two years until the last instalment and I am very interested to see at what point within the 20th century it will be set. This book is a brilliant read and whilst the historical events (particularly the spy ring in Spain) may not be perfect, it is a very good portrayal of events and you will get very emotionally invested in the lives of the people in the book, which is what a good book should do.