In February 1915, Ethel works her seamstress job in the working district with her new friend, Mildred, who lives in the house with her. She then goes to a Labour Party meeting led by Bernie where Maud gives a speech about women who must support their families and how they cannot let the war stop progress. Ethel writes a coded letter to Billy about how she wishes she was dead. Meanwhile, Lev is caught cheating at a card game in Aberowen and is forced to flee, with Billy helping him on the train. Later, Billy finds Ethel giving birth and helps her through the process. Follett once again creates a world at once familiar and fantastic. . . . A guiltless pleasure, the book is impossible to put down. . . . Empires fall. Heroes rise. Love conquers. After going through a war with these characters, you’re left hoping that Follett gets moving with the next giant installment.”— Time Out New York And all this is very human as he interlaces stories of the personal lives of interesting characters.

When Grigori Peshkov is called up to the army, his supervisor manages to get him a reprieve since his labor is needed on the home front. However, his clash with Police Officer Pinsky in his rescue of Katerina leads Pinsky to force him to join up anyway. The following morning, Maud asks Ethel to go for a walk with her as a chaperone and they exchange gossip about political figures. They meet Walter von Ulrich, which is the purpose of the walk. As Ethel walks separately, she sees them holding hands and then kissing passionately until they are interrupted by the ground shaking.On the troop ship carrying Gus and other American troops overseas, Spanish flu breaks out and claims several men. Germany’s army is advancing with the front now at Rheims, north of Paris. The British army is pinned down in Flanders.

A week later, Billy takes part in the informal services at Bethesda Chapel, praying for understanding of the hard-heartedness of the mine directors, whose negligence caused so many deaths and injuries. Follett is masterly in conveying so much drama and historical information so vividly . . . grippingly told.”— The New York Times Book Review The newspapers contain more information about the unrest in Ireland than the troubles in the Balkans. Walter meets his cousin Robert, who is intimate with the Austrian court. Robert tells Walter that the assassins were supplied by Serbian military intelligence. He also says that the Austrian emperor has written to Kaiser Wilhelm, stating his resolve that Serbia must be eliminated. Also contemplate Ethel and Maud's work as women's rights advocates. Were there aspects of each woman's personal life that seemed at odds with her commitment to advancing the cause of women?Major characters introduced after the party include Grigori and Lev Peshkov, two Russian orphans who work in a locomotive factory and have personal reasons to hold a grudge against Princess Bea and the rest of the Russian royal family. Grigori and Lev's father was executed by Bea's aristocratic family for alleged improper grazing of cattle on Bea's family's land. Billy’s family is inextricably linked with the Fitzherberts, the aristocratic owners of the coal mine where he works. And when Maud Fitzherbert falls in love with Walter von Ulrich, a spy at the German embassy in London, their destiny also becomes entangled with that of Gus Dewar, an ambitious young aide to Woodrow Wilson, and two orphaned Russian brothers whose plan to emigrate to America falls foul of conscription, revolution and imminent war. Grigori rises in the emerging Bolshevik Party. Katerina is miserable as the birth of her baby draws near. In an attempt to break up the soviets, the government decides to send the Petrograd garrison to the front. Lenin and Trotsky argue over the merits of a coalition government. Is it significant that Fall of Giants begins with the stories of Billy and Ethel Williams? Would the novel have been different if other characters’ stories opened the book, such as those of Grigori and Lev Peshkov, or Gus Dewar?

In St. Petersburg, Fitz and Gus Dewar tour the Russian locomotive works, guided by Lev and Grigori Peshkov. Grigori recognizes Fritz’s wife Bea as the sister of the Russian prince who had killed his father. Politics is an important element in Fall of the Giants, and you're married to a politician who is a member of Parliament for the Labour Party in the United Kingdom. Did your relationship with your wife influence the view of politics that is presented in your novel? And is there anything of her, or other important women in your life, in your main female characters? Maud sends a letter to Walter, not sure that the mail service between Britain and Germany has resumed. She is horrified by the anti-German sentiment at home. She and Ethel still have not made up. At a meeting, Bernie is interrupted by demands that he explain his views Grigori is on hand to welcome Lenin home. Lenin’s speech to the crowd urges them to start a world revolution, not one confined to Russia. He preaches the overthrow of the provisional government and a withdrawal from the war, just as Walter had bribed him to do. Fitz worries about what Ethel will do, fearing that she will tell his wife and cause her to have another miscarriage. Perceval Jones tells him that the tensions in Ireland are reaching a breaking point: Ireland has been promised independence, but the Protestants fear the control of the Catholic majority.Alas I found myself unable to really engage with the characters, finding them rather cardboard cutout. I could not help feeling that each was created purely to act as a vehicle to show key historical moments and most of the conversations they had, tended to give us lengthy history lessons. The fact that they seemed to somehow turn up at key points of world events of the time, I found clunky. Talk about the historical figures that appear throughout Fall of Giants, such as Woodrow Wilson, King George V, Vladimir Lenin, and others. What did you think of Ken Follett's depiction of them? Do you like seeing notable people such as these come alive in fiction, or do you prefer reading about them in a strictly historical context?