NEVER, by Ken Follett
War... what is it good for? Really. Big. Books.
Judging it by its cover
This one has war written all over it. Figuratively speaking. Big map of the world. It’s all red, and it’s got what look like radar lines all over it. I’m sure there’s a clever name for them. I don’t know what it is, but I bet Ken Follett would.
It’s heavy and intense looking. If this an actual real historic blow by blow account of a war, I’m likely to hate it. I’m hoping it’s a novel.
It’s huge too. Either a lot of stuff happens, or Ken really loves his details. Or just doesn’t know when to stop. I’ve already mentioned this book and my mate Dan who chose it, so let’s just get cracking.
How was it?
So, by the end, I really liked it. But it took me a good 400 pages to really get hooked. My arms and shoulders have had a decent work out too, given that it was a hefty 816 pages.
The story starts with Tamara, an elite American intelligence agent working in North Africa. She’s technically there on a counter terrorism mission, shutting down a people trafficking operation. It turns out that’s been run by ISGS (which seems to be the same thing as ISIS, but maybe the author just didn’t want to call it that). They also end up trying to stop a war from escalating between Chad, which is supported by America and France, and Sudan, which buys its arms from Korea and China - and who appear to be supporting the terrorists.
It’s a bit of a secondary plot to the book (think Keira Knightley in Love Actually) but it starts by really nicely demonstrating how a small combat between two seemingly unimportant countries quickly turns into a row between two world superpowers, and needs to be de-escalated before things get dangerous. Tamara also meets and falls in love with another intelligence agent, which is nice.
Then we move to the USA. That’s the first point at which I was fully reassured that none of this is real life, and very grateful for it. The President of the USA is a woman, called Pauline Green. And, at the time of writing, that’s never happened so it’s clearly been done to deliberately discourage any suggestions that the author is referring to any particular president. The President is (as they always are) a well intentioned, good hearted person with a tough job to do, at great sacrifice to themselves. She’s a patriot and always keen to do the right thing, for Good Old ‘Merikuh, and for the World. We meet her husband, and her daughter and it’s all generally very human and nice, because they’re all smashing lovely people.
Then we’ve got China. Over that side of the globe, we meet Kai Chang. He’s the ambitious, up and coming head of the security services with dreams of becoming the president of China. He’s got a really sexy superstar famous actress wife - they’re a real power couple. Kai is considered a moderate, or a reformist, with dreams of a more peaceful and more progressive China. Less Jackie Chan, more K-pop and bubble tea.
But mostly, the people in power in China, and particularly running the military, are a bunch of posturing violent numbskulls. They are perpetually suspicious of America, convinced that the Americans are out to destroy their way of life. They feel surrounded by American allies (Australia, Japan, Thailand etc) and they are ready at all times to protect the image of China globally, even if it means a completely self-destructive fight. There is a bit of an attempt by the President of China to keep things chill, but there’s a big military coup and power is quickly seized by the old guard, who just want to smash shit up.
And then we’ve got Korea. Divided between north and south, the North is allied with China, and the south with USA. China is convinced that Korea is its only real military ally, and the only thing keeping America off their doorstep. China is 100% invested in the success of the horrific regime running North Korea.
So, between all of that, you’ve really got the same narrative as a good scrap at a Wetherspoons:
North Korea sold weapons to Chad, and that pissed of the USA.
USA had a go at them, and they got grumpy, so they blew up a little boat somewhere. That annoyed off the Americans a little more, but also really annoyed South Korea. It was their boat, to be fair.
South Korea wasn’t going to let them get the last laugh so they blew up something else, and that pissed off China.
Then China bombed some stuff, so America bombed some even bigger Chinese stuff, while their girlfriends were helpfully yelling at each other “Just leave it China… he ain’t even worf it!” and yanking each other’s hair.
And it all escalated with a whole lot of “well… they started it, and I’ll finish it!” energy, until America and China set blown up the whole Wetherspoons, killing absolutely everyone else in the process.
The book’s intention was to demonstrate that no one ever actually intended to cause a war, and no one wanted a war, but it happened anyway. It also seemed to really want to demonstrate that most world leaders are stupid. It played almost entirely within the basic stereotypes of each nation, which bothered me more than anything else in the book. The North Koreans were nutters. The South Koreans were mostly nice folk trying to get on with their lives. The Americans were the clear thinking, righteous ones. The Chinese were mostly a bunch of violent, vengeful stupid old men who would say dumb things like “if we don’t retaliate, China will look weak!” and “we can’t possibly lose… we’re China!”. I didn’t get the feeling Ken Follett really knows a lot of Chinese politicians. Or maybe he does and they really are like that, but I hope not.
Almost every stupid action in the book begins with someone saying, in a smart-arsed smug kind of way, “we must retaliate, but not escalate things", before then doing something really escalatory, that someone else is blatantly going to feel the need to retaliate to.
So, little by little, Korea’s conflict spills over and brings in Japan and then the USA and China until nuclear weapons get fired. One thing that is made clear is that America has, by far, the biggest arsenal of nukes. So, they’ll win and everyone knows it, but they’ll start a nuclear winter and destroy the entire planet first. So, China thinks they might as well just crack on anyway. The very last chapter of the book ends with President Green pressing the big red button and launching the attack to end all attacks.
The book also completely ignores Russia. The other world superpowers don’t get involved in any way. I guess that would have taken a whole load more pages, or just made things too complicated, but it seemed weird to me that the world slipped the whole way into a nuclear war that guaranteed the destruction of the entire planet without Russia or Europe ever really seeming to even twig, or stick their noses in at all.
It’s scary and shows how fragile world peace is, but mostly it was a whole bunch of cute little romance stories and human stories, weaved into a not terribly convincing account of the outbreak of WWIII. It really is Love Actually, just with the backdrop of nuclear war, rather than Christmas. It’s nice if you like the human stories, but I don’t get the impression they’re the author’s strong suit. He would rather be writing about the war and the diplomacy and all that stuff, so it feels like a slightly confusing straddle between the two genres. We to-and-fro from touching stories about people falling in (and out of) love when they really shouldn’t, interspersed with quite lengthy technical conversations around the implements and techniques of war, or a dialogue on the ethics of the nuclear deterrent. It just doesn’t fit together that well.
I assume the intention was to make you care enough about the characters that the final tragic conclusion hits home harder, with a real sense of loss, beyond just “everyone in the world died, oh no!”. It didn’t really do that, the personal stories felt quite unconnected to the overall war narrative to be honest. I also don’t really need a book to invent people I care about so that a nuclear apocalypse feels sad… I think I can get there anyway, given that there are already people I care about in The World. It’s where I live.
Still a great read, and if you’d like my copy, it’ll cost me about £84 to post because it’s huge, but you can have it anyway, because I’m nice like that.
Peace out everyone.