Edge of Eternity (The Century Trilogy, Book 3)

The historical novel Edge of Eternity(EOE) by Ken Follett is the final book in a trilogy by Mr. Follett. These three novels, perhaps, Follett’s magnum opus, provide a broad overview of 20th century European and American history beginnings with the start of World War One and ending with the end of the “Cold War” and the collapse of the Soviet Union as signaled by the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall. The previous novels of the trilogy were “Fall of the Giants” and “Winter of the World,” which were published respectively in 2010 and 2012. This 20th century history is told through the stories of six family clans originating in Russia, England, Scotland, Germany, Austria and the United States. We follow these families through five generations of personal struggles and triumphs while in the background the major political, economic, and social metamorphoses of that era unfold.EOE starts in 1961 East Germany with the Franck family: Walli and his sister Lili both aspiring musicians and Rebecca who was adopted by the Francks. Because of the family’s progressive views and Walli and Lili’s disposition for western music they are under suspicion of the Satsi, the East German secret police, whose main function is to spy on the general population. This is the same year of the construction of the Berlin Wall. The year 1961 was start of the Freedom rides, a major event in the American Civil Rights Movement. George Jakes an African American who is newly graduated from Harvard Law is a freedom rider. Jakes is the grandson of Lev Peshkov, a Russian gangster who immigrated to the United States early in the 20th century and made a fortune. George, a major character in the novel, is raised by his mother and has had minimal contact with his white father of Russian decent who was a major political force in the US. Throughout the novel George, with a taste for fine things both wine and women, has a career in both the private and public sectors , all the time with a firm dedication to attainment of human rights and social justice through the constitution and laws of the US.In the early 60’s in Russia , twins Dimka and Tanya Dvorkin, George Jake’s distant cousins, are rising stars in Soviet infrastructure. Dimka as a trusted assistant to the General Secretary of the Communist Party Nikita Khrushchev and Tanya as a reporter for TASS, the Soviet News agency.George Jakes meets Maria Summers during the Freedom Rides of 1961. Maria like George is a recent graduate of a prestigious Law School, the University of Chicago. Maria is also dedicated to social justice and seeks a career in the federal government. George is attracted to Maria but the relationship does not immediately flourish into a romance. During a Freedom Ride in Alabama, George is seriously injured saving Maria from a white mob. Subsequently, George and Maria become very close professionally (but not romantically) as each move on in their respective careers, George initially as one of Attorney General Bobby Kennedy’s few black lawyers and Maria in a junior position in President John K. Kennedy’s White House Press Office.The reader is privy to the behind the scenes tensions and negotiations of the Kennedy Administration with respect to its lukewarm support of Civil Rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King and the push for a “Civil Rights” bill during the early 1960s. The readers also enjoy a candid backstage account of, perhaps, the most frightening world nuclear confrontation of the last 50 years, the “Cuban Missile Crisis.” During this crisis George is a trusted assistant to Bobby Kennedy and is a participate in some of the most strategic meeting of JFK’s administration. In these meeting George is exposed to the hyper connectivity of politics, i.e., the interplay between domestic policy and foreign policy. Follett tells the American story through George at the Department of Justice and Maria at the White House, who has become a paramour of the President.During the Missile Crisis, we are provided an insight into, perhaps, the USSR’s thinking through the eyes of the Dvorkin twins. Dimka is now a senior assistant to Nikita Khrushchev and has a major responsibility in the secret program to ship missiles to Cuba. Follett always develops characters as layered human beings and he communicates Dimka’s humanity through his uncertainties and slight awkwardness regarding his love life which is contra posed against his brilliance and decisiveness with respect to his job as a senior assistant/advisor to Khrushchev. Khrushchev, like Kennedy, has fractions within his Communist Party and there is a constant struggle within between the progressives, those who seek to resolve issues through diplomacy and strategic negotiations, and the conservatives, i.e., those who tend towards military confrontations as a strategy for problem resolution. Dimka as a major player in the drama has to manage the progressive- conservative dynamics.Tanya Dvorkin is on a TASS assignment in Cuba during the Missile Crisis. While there she provides useful information to Dimka as she starts an affair with on a Cuban Colonel in Castro’s revolutionary army. There is a major build up of international tension after JFK announces the Cuban Blockade and the American Military moves to a DEFCON level signaling a status of imminent war. Tanya is amazed by the courage and fearlessness of the Cuban people as they marshaled their resources for war against the United States of America. At the same time, she was appalled by their naivety as the men armed themselves; sometimes “.. lacking guns they carried kitchen knives, meat cleavers in their belts, as if they were going to fight the Americans hand-to-hand..” She recalled that just one US B-52, one of the many, which would come to bomb Cuba if war was declared, carried 70,000 pounds of bombs. What would the kitchen knives and meat cleavers do against that she wondered.George, as Bobby Kennedy’s assistant sits in on executive committee meetings of the National Security Council regarding the Crisis. The reader is given fascinating renditions of “fictionalized” discussions of strategies by such well known US Government Officials of that era such as General Maxwell Taylor, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, John McCone, head of the CIA, Dean Rusk, and Robert McNamara members of JKK’s Cabinet. Similarly, the reader is exposed to hypothetical discussions of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, the ruling body of the USSR. In addition to Khrushchev, we hear from Soviet leaders of that time such as, foreign minister Andrei Gromyko and defense minister Rodion Malinovsky.During the early 60’s we find that in England the story focus is on the Williams family in particular Evie and Dave as they initiate careers in the arts, with Evie as an actress and Dave as a pop musician. Over the next 40 years both enjoy careers of enormous success. The roads to their successes are not linear, particularly for Dave, who, as a young man, must overcome some learning challenges. He moves to the US and there he has an opportunity to explore some African American culture through its music and a brief tryst with an African American soul singer. Jasper Murray, who the Williams family takes in, also winds up in America. Jasper is very ambitious and without conscious while he becomes a well-known journalist and controversial television star.Brother and sister Cam and Beep Dewar who are the grandchildren of Gus Dewar a major character in the earlier books represent the Dewars, the only family that in the Follett trilogy originates in America. These are children of American political aristocracy , they had both a grandfather and great grandfather who were US senators. The social and political paths of Cam and Beep will take diametrically different directions throughout the almost 40 years of the novel. Cam in college becomes a “Young Republican” Nixon loving conservative and spends his life working to defeat communism with a career in the CIA . His sister Beep goes to UC – Berkeley and adopts the political philosophy of the so-called hippie culture of the 60’s.Follett is consistent in drawing parallels to oppression regardless of which side of the “Iron Curtain” it may fall. For example, he notes police power abuses in East Europe in particular East Germany, as well as, British Northern Ireland, America’s deep South and the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. Through Follett’s fictional characters, the reader is exposed to the details of several major factual seminal events of the last half of the century such as: The Freedom Rides; Berlin Wall; Cuban Missile Crisis; Birmingham Civil Rights Campaign; the assignations of the Kennedys, Dr. King and Malcolm X; Vietnam, Watergate, Russia’s desperate attempt to crush the Czech reform movement and stem the political decline of the USSR with 1968 Czechoslovakia invasion; to name just a few of the events covered in EOE.Throughout the novel the Dvorkin twins Dimka and Tanya are dedicated communist and lovers of their country. But they are also “progressives” and feel that the Russian people will never achieve full greatness and potential under the yoke of a heavy-handed centrally controlled communist infrastructure. Therefore, secretly and with great risk, Tanya works surreptitiously to support freedom of expression and openness. She has a life long relationship with a brilliant dissident writer and helps to secretly to have his literature published in the western press. Dimka works inside the government for progressive change and towards the end of the novel he is a trusted assistant to Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev and becomes a major player in the implementation of Gorbachev's policies of glasnost ("openness") and perestroika ("restructuring"). These policies are major factors in USA /USSR rapprochement and the ending of the Cold War.Follett allows the reader to observe the unfolding of the major events of the 20th century through the lives of these complex and diverse families. In EOE we have the personal dramas of these characters as they go through the human journey of ambition, love, devotedness, sex, infidelity, marriage, divorce, birth, death, and renaissance. In addition to being a great storyteller, Follett is also a historical researcher and has been known to expend prodigious resources researching the topics of which he writes. The research needed for this book is quite formidable and it could serve as an addendum text for a formal 20th century history course. At the end of the book he cites the academics, politicians and others who were consulted during the research for the novel. I think that Follett provides enough background such that one could read EOE with first reading the prior two novels of the trilogy. But to do so would deprive the reader of an exciting journey through the mega transformational events of the last hundred years.

I’ll start out by saying that I read this book mostly just out of curiosity to see how Follett’s Century Trilogy ended. I had already read the first two, and part of my semi-OCD forced me to complete the series just for the sake of finishing the story and seeing it through the end. But my criticisms of the 2nd installment (Winter of the World) were only magnified and exacerbated in this third and final installment of the series.Mr. Follett showed in this final book his clear and loud anti-Republican and anti-conservative biases which spoiled the series as a whole. Were it not for his tenacious desire to inject his personal political views into the story, this series would’ve actually been incredible. At the cost of writing historical inaccuracies, for the most part, he painted Democrats as the do-gooders, the saints, and the lofty moral people in society whereas conservatives/Republicans were painted as evil and liars, which couldn’t be farther from the truth in this disgusting over-and mis-generalization. In the book, Follett paints only Republican journalists as lying and smearing attackers, when in fact historical record shows quite the opposite, or at least the same level of the same thing on both sides. Republicans are branded as racist, when in fact Mr. Follett conveniently ignores historical facts such as the fact that a far greater proportion of Republicans voted in favor of the Civil Rights Acts than did Democrats. But in his quest to elevate Democrats and demonize Republicans, Mr. Follett couldn’t be bothered to accurately portray the historical record.It as incredibly distasteful and disgusting that Mr. Follett chose to completely gloss over the incredible and key events of the 70s and 80s, disregarding the key moments of the Republican presidencies and the shortcomings of the Carter presidency with all its failures. Nixon as characterized as a compulsive liar and Reagan’s accomplishments were completely ignored, as the latter was simply branded by the author as a “mass murderer.” This egregious suppression of historical fact and reality, and the relevance of the surrounding cultural aspects which led to the rise and popularity - and in many ways, also successes - of key Republican figures does a major disservice to history. And this is all quite frankly shameful and disgusting. A major if not the most major theme in this book was communism, yet Mr. Follett completely ignored and omitted the importance of the famous Reagan Berlin Wall speech and the incredible pressure and efforts by both the Reagan administration and the Papacy to put an end to Communism, which led to a successful outcome with the fall of the Berlin Wall. There was not even a mention of the famous Berlin Wall Speech by Reagan until almost the very end, in a rushed final scene where the questionable “Republicans” in the story dismissively disregard the entire Reagan presidency (pretty outrageous). Instead, Mr. Follet opted to portray the Communist leaders in a far more positive light than the Western leaders who did far more to bring about the final result. Mr. Follett’s attempts to recast history in such a shameful way only makes this book all the worse - anything that would shine positively upon a Republican figure would be excluded from the book only because that figure held the wrong political views.This book spent a whole lot of time on the 60s with Kennedy and LBJ to great detail but the following 2 decades were rushed entirely, doing a disservice to telling a historical fiction novel in the proper way, with due fairness to both sides. Moreover, Mr. Follett included WAY TOO MANY sex scenes - like he went significantly overboard and it soon got repetitive (SPOILER ALERT - everyone cheats on everyone, but somehow in the end, nobody minds and gets back together—really???), tiring, and diluted the main points of the story. Literally after the first 10 sex scenes, I groaned inwardly every time another one came up. Mr. Follett should’ve cut down on the sex and given more pages to the events of the 70s and 80s.If I were a bleeding heart liberal, I would’ve enjoyed this book a lot more (or enjoyed it by any measure). (Un?)fortunately I am not. The first book of this series (Fall of Giants, which I gave 5 stars) was great, it was an amazing base to what could’ve been an amazing series. But then, the 2nd book (Winter of the World, I gave it 4 stars) began the trend that as made 100X worse in this final installment of the Edge of Eternity (2 stars for me). It’s a shame that Mr. Follett ruined what started out as a great introductory installment with huge potential by dousing the reader repeatedly with his misguided and often warped historical interpretations and personal political views. I struggled between rating this book 1 or 2 stars and decided for 2 stars. 1 Star is reserved for truly terrible books, which this one is not in all fairness. That said, this book is still awful and does not deserve more than 2 stars.Had Mr. Follett chosen to present history in an objectively neutral manner, this series would’ve been probably one of the best that I read. Unfortunately, he did not do this and as a result ruined the Century Trilogy. Without a doubt, Edge of Eternity was a major disappointment and I urge you, the prospective reader to avoid this book if you haven’t read it yet. Save your time, buy another book and read that instead. Steer clear of this one. However, if you the reader still insist on reading this book, then do go ahead, but read it for its qualities as a pure work of fiction and nothing more. Certainly do not read this book if you’re hoping to get an accurate and fair account of history.In summary, this book was a huge disappointment and I would NOT recommend it.

The only thing I had an issue with was the excessive politics,. but I'm not sure how this story could have been told without it. There must have been some things that could have been skimmed down because at some points I got the idea the author was more interested in telling the political story than the characters story and I didn't like that. The characters should be just as interesting as the books scenery but in this last book of the series I'm not sure they were. All in all it was a very good series.

An insightful way to review the times my self and mu family grew up thru. I like the way history is portrayed thru the eyes of family's living thru the differing events.

Ken Follett does it again! Only he can get me interested in history by weaving his intricate tale of great characters who love, hate, endure and fail. They keep fighting for what they believe in and with that unending endurance they eventually get what they have been striving for. He walks us through the Kennedy years, Vietnam, and the tearing down of the wall between East and West Germany. There is also the ongoing fight for black equality and the book ends with the presidential election of Barack Obama. A great read and definitely worth your time!

I hadn’t read a Ken Follett novel since last century before reading this one. I recall reading ‘The Eye of the Needle’ and ‘The Key to Rebecca’, both good thrillers set during WW2.‘Edge of eternity’ is an entertaining read and third in a trilogy. Reviewers said there is no problem reading it without having read the other two first, which I have found to be the case.Different branches of a family, in the USA, UK, East Germany and the Soviet Union experience major events of the 1960s to 1980s such as the Berlin Wall, the Cuban missile crisis, and for those in the USA, the civil rights movement and Vietnam war, and the end of communism in Eastern Europe.It is an easy read and at times leaves you wondering how things might have been different. For example, if Bobby Kennedy hadn’t been shot and become President in 1968 rather than Nixon, would the Vietnam war have ended sooner and thousand of lives have been saved? Would civil rights have embedded themselves more successfully? Or do such things make no long term difference? A fascinating question we shall never know the answer to.

Absolutely wonderful and insightful written history of the last 30 years. Even more meaningful as I remember most of the events. I laughed and cried with the characters understanding their emotions.

As usual, Ken Follet has written a truly excellent and very readable book which I throughly recommend. The only other comment I would make all his female characters are outstanding beauties. No 'plain janes' allowed. And they all end up in bed, surprise surprise. I think you might call this book a 'bonk buster'!

Puts recent history into personal fictitious context. That is a good read with engaging characters that bring the story to life.

Oh, darn it. It's really not as good as the other two. If you liked the other two then you kind of pretty much have to read it just to find out what happens to the characters, but actually, you don't find out what happens to many of them. By the very end of the book, the epilogue, all of the first book's characters and quite a lot of the second's, must be dead, but we don't find out what happened to many of them, which is a bit of a let-down. More importantly, I'd say the book suffers because the history is nowhere near as interesting as the first and second world wars. The main feature of the Cold War was that it was a war of words but nothing much happened. Even the Cuban Missile Crisis was more of a non-event than an event. So although they're interesting from a historical point of view, from a seat-of-the-pants action point of view, they don't match up. I enjoyed (if that's the right word?) the assassinations of the Kennedy Brothers, especially Bobby, which made me look him up on the internet and I found that Follett describes it pretty much exactly how it happened (his assassin is still alive by the way - and he was interviewed by David Frost. Fascinating). And the Civil Rights movement is very interesting - I hadn't known much about it before so this helped to fill me in. And that's why the trilogy is such a good read - it's basically history for dummies, an easy-reading jaunt through the main events of the 21st Century. Buty it's not literary fiction; Follett is just as much a proponent of the one or two wordparagraphas Dan Brown. But who cares. I don't go and see the latest Hollywood Blockbuster expecting to have a profound cultural experience. It's entertainment. Don't knock it for that.I found it a bit odd having real-life characters who are still alive interacting with the fictional characters. I wonder if Gorbachev's read it? That jarred a bit for me in a way that it didn't with real-life dead characters in this and earlier books. But more importantly, the characters in this book were just not as good as the ones in the previous books. They all had spectacularly successful (and unlikely at such a young age) careers - but the fact that there are lots of famous historical events with real characters and yet the fictionally world famous rock band that's a major feature of the book, along with other supposedly world famous fictional characters, doesn't sit well with the real characters. For the idea of mixing fictional with real characters to work, the real characters have to be people you would never have heard of (which is why the first two books work) but it's quite hard to suspend disbelief when there are characters who had they been real you would have definitely heard of, mixing with characters who were actually real. Also the sheer unlikelihood of the characters from the various families interacting with each other so randomly so often by this book really begin to grate on my suspension of disbelief.So yes, you do have to read it if you've read the other two books, but don't expect to enjoy it as much.