Edge of Eternity

Edge of Eternity – by Ken Follett

The last book of the Century Trilogy by Ken Follett is, by far, the worst of the three.  In fact, it’s really the only bad one of the bunch.  But, boy, is it bad.  The first two were magnificent, but he manages to hit rock bottom with this one.

The Century Trilogy begins around the time of World War I.  The author focuses on four different families, each one is a different nationality – German, English, Russian, and American.  This way, the author can tell a story while incorporating a lot of history within the pages.  We seem to find our main characters right in the middle of some of the most important and well known events of the past century.  The first book ends around the conclusion of the First World War – with all of the main characters having babies.  The second book focuses on World War II, with all of those babies now grown up and being promoted to center stage.  Of course, they then have babies of their own so we can then have a third book taking place around the 1960s.

So, yes, the formula is the same with this, third, book.  The problem here is that Follett has run out of ideas on how to tell a good story.  Yes, we have the characters again immersed in the times of the early sixties – the main players being The Civil Rights movement, The Berlin Wall, The Cuban Missile Crisis, and, oddly, The British Invasion music scene.  Instead of well thought out characters doing what well thought out characters do, Follett has simply relegated everyone to be backup pieces to all of the major events.  In many ways, you could argue that this book could serve as a Cliffs Notes for 1960’s world history.  As I would read about these characters being smack dab in the middle of some of the most famous events in history, I couldn’t help be reminded of Forrest Gump.  Yes, Forrest Gump was a good movie, but it wasn’t supposed to be taken seriously.  This book, unbelievably, tries to pass off as being serious.

It just became tiresome after a while.  Example: When we read a chapter that begins with a character who is working with Dr. Martin Luther King going to Memphis in April 1968, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what will happen after the next twenty pages or so.  The entire book is like this.  The author also simply tries to include too much.  The Vietnam war is actually a minor player, but Follett figures he has to tell SOMETHING about the tragedy, so he hurriedly has a character get drafted, then in the jungle, and then experiencing every horror conceivable in only one chapter.  We basically never read or hear about it again.  It’s embarrassingly contrived.

Then we come to the sleaze factor.  Sadly, this is becoming a bit of a given with Ken Follett’s recent work, so I would be an eternal optimist to expect anything to change.  It can be downright sickening.  Yes, it’s ok for characters to fall in love and make love, but Follett simply doesn’t know where to stop with all of his pornographic descriptions.  I really wish he didn’t feel the need to tell us every personal, nauseating detail of what goes on in a closed bedroom between lovers, but his descriptions are enough to make any sane person lose their lunch.  It also happens over and over and over and over again.  He could have easily trimmed about 100 pages but cutting out all of the explicit sex. 

Speaking of unnecessary sleaze and sex, we even get to read about President Kennedy’s fictitious escapades behind the scenes.  Now, history tells us that Kennedy, sadly, was a womanizer, but is it really necessary to go into such X-rated descriptions here??  Apparently one of our main characters, a young female White House staffer, is having an ongoing affair with the married President, so we have to read about it ad-nauseum.  In every nasty detail.  Including when the young woman gets pregnant and Kennedy makes her get an abortion.  Yes, the author actually includes such ridiculous offensive garbage.  This make-believe event actually happens fairly early in the book, and a part of me wishes that I had just quit reading at that point.

About half of this book is 1960-1963, and the second half goes from 1964 to present day.  He should have stuck with the first half, as he zooms too quickly through history once 1964 arrives.  You can’t really tell a good story covering four different families on multiple continents over 54 years in only 500 pages.  So instead, we basically get regurgitated history thrown at us.  To be completely honest, at this point I basically DID give up, and just skimmed the remainder of the book.

It was also hard for me to remember all the characters from the first two books, and what their significance was.  They’re only minor players here, and Follett does do an adequate job refreshing the reader with who they are and what they did, but there were just too many people to keep track of, even though I did enjoy reading about most of them in the first two books.

The author even manages to invent a fictitious story about Ronald Reagan which shows the man as truly evil and demented.  We don’t read anything at all about Reagan’s role in things such as, aiding the Berlin Wall getting torn down.  A bit odd since the Berlin Wall is a major player in this story. But, for whatever reason, I guess we’re not supposed to read about anything good the man did since his ideologies conflict with the author’s.  Oddly, I only found this episode to be mildly annoying after all of the explicit X-rated affairs of Kennedy were detailed.

It’s too bad the author didn’t stop after two books.  They were actually quite good.  Follett has written mostly good work throughout his career.  I would recommend “The Pillars of the Earth”, “The Man From St. Petersburg” and “The Eye of the Needle”.  Yes, he has written some that were less than great, but none as bad as this one.   This one was atrocious.