RaveThe Washington Post... classic King, with an extra measure of urgency and anger. Beneath its extravagant plot and typically propulsive prose, the book is animated by a central concern that could not be more relevant: the inhumane treatment of children ... Few writers have King’s ability to create credible young people whose nascent qualities prefigure the adults they will (with luck) become. And even fewer have the imaginative resources that King brings to bear on his portrait of life at the Institute, a life filled with large and small cruelties, and with a chilling indifference to the effect those cruelties have on the most vulnerable among us ... Once again, the real world peers out from behind the curtain of King’s fiction ... a first-rate entertainment that has something important to say. We all need to listen.
Ken Follett
PositiveThe Washington PostFollett will surely solidify that reputation with Fall of Giants, the first installment of a hugely ambitious work-in-progress called The Century Trilogy ... As the series title indicates, it recounts – or begins to recount – the chaotic history of the 20th century ... Set against this historical panorama are the intertwined lives of dozens of characters, all of them shaped – and sometimes warped – by the pressures of class, gender, politics and war ... These are the central players, and their complex relationships encompass secret marriages, upstairs-downstairs romances, ill-timed pregnancies and assorted acts of love, lust and betrayal ... Despite all this, Fall of Giants offers pleasures that more than compensate for its lack of literary finesse.
