The third third

The entirety of Ken Follett’s Edge of Eternity, the formidable third and final volume of his massive Century Trilogy, occurs within my adult lifetime, which leaves me with a very different perspective than the one I had on the trilogy’s first two installments, Fall of Giants and Winter of the World. Edge tells an engaging story (although these family epics are not my normal literary fare) and represents a writerly feat of the first magnitude, but it’s CliffsNotes history, concentrating primarily on Cold War politics in Russia and the U.S., the American civil rights movement, “free love,” and the rock music scene. The Vietnam war is worth only a scene or two, the American peace movement even less; totally ignored are such fairly significant events as the French-Algerian war, the end of apartheid in South Africa, the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, the deposition of the Shah and the Iranian-U.S. hostage crisis, turmoil in South America, and Bill Clinton’s most famous escapades (although JFK’s bedroom adventures are a major obsession). 

Still, seen as the story of several interconnected families played out against the background of the 20th Century, the series—all three installments—makes an absorbing read.

So. If you read the first two books in the series you do not want to miss this one, if for no other reasons than to see how (some) things turn out.