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The Pillars of the Earth eBook Ken Follett

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The Pillars of the Earth eBook Ken Follett

I once read an interview by one of my favorite indie authors, Matt Schiariti, and he listed this book as his all time favorite. I bought this book later on this year, but put off reading it because IT IS OVER 1000 PAGES - OH MAI GAWD!

But, wanting to look cool I decided to give it a try. Honestly, it didn't sound like anything I'd be interested in... so I didn't have any expectations.

And then I started it, and whoa man. I got sucked in.

There's so much drama in this book. Right when you think one thing is resolved, something else pops up. Oh, and I cried. I don't even know how many times. I also lost a lot of sleep.

Despite the amount of pages, I flew through this book.

This takes place over an amount of decades with lots of characters. But they're all written so well, even the ones that only show up for a couple pages, that they are all distinctive. And there are so many intertwined stories, but there wasn't any times where I was confused about what was going on.

After finishing it, I brought it to my dad and told him he has to read it. I very rarely make recommendations to my father. (This is the second book I've told him to read in the last five years.)

Major thing to point out - the woman in this story are ah-may-zing. Yes, it's historical and things were different back then. But they were all written as strong, independent, and Ellen was totally the most sane character in the entire book. My only complaint is that there wasn't enough focus on her.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes drama and has any interest on 12th century England.


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The Pillars of the Earth eBook Ken Follett Reviews

It's hard to believe that the same author that wrote one of the great books of all time, "Pillars of the Earth", also wrote this book. It's start out really, really poorly and I almost put it down before I had read 200 pages. But I had read the first two in the trilogy and I was interested in the history of the era, so persevered. It gets better but the issues still remain.

The reason I gave this 3 stars instead of 1 or 2 is the historical fiction aspect. This is where Follet shines. He does a good job of explaining the detail and background of events that, though I lived through them, I was young enough that I didn't know these details. But even here, while duly recording history, Follet's political bias' colour the narrative - whose politics he agrees with and his interpretation of events definitely sway the pure facts of the narrative. He is especially harsh and critical of the Kennedy brothers in contrast to the view of most contemporary historians.

But the worst part of this book, the hardest bit to suffer through in order to get to the good bits, were the purely fictional characters. This is meant to be a sweeping generational novel where the real hook for the reader should be that we care about these families as they live through these times. But in 1145 pages, Follet cannot do better than to give us cardboard cutouts with no soul and some of the most trite, insipid dialogue I have ever had the displeasure to read. We should be crying and laughing and sharing these monumental events with these characters (because, of course, Forrest Gump-like, they all just happen to be right in the middle of everything through all the decades). But instead they are just passive observers and we don't care at all about them.

Even worse, Follet treats the reader like a dunce who can't remember from chapter to chapter people and events, constantly repeating what this person did, or who they are. And repeating the background of people, events and places multiple times. This book could have been cut by at least a third in length if these repetitions were eliminated. There is a cast of characters at the front but I never once had to check it, as I often do in other similar books, because I keep getting told even what I remember every time a character shows up again. The other device I found really irritating is Follet's practice of telling us about a historical event followed by a comment like ". . . George thought" or someone else thought. Not a true experience of the event by George, just something like George is watching this event unfold on TV (say the Berlin Wall coming down) and something about the wall, and then "George thought this was great" or something equally trite.

Writing this review, I now want to change my rating back to 2 stars as I remember how irritating the fictional characters were. But I did get swept up in the story and the historical parts were interesting and well written. I am surprised by all the 4 and 5 star reviews of this book, maybe other people did better at ignoring the weakness of the main characters. I have read all of Follet's historical fiction novels and, while some were better than others, this one is by far his worst.
725 pp.

The Welsh author, Ken Follett, has written a tome about the building of a cathedral in the imaginary village of Kingsbridge, England, in the 1100s. He stipulates that he is not a believer and that his ambivalence about writing this historical novel lasted for years. However, at some point in his life, he became enamoured of and obsessed with cathedrals, and visited many of them prior to putting words to paper. The novel occurs within the context of ecclesiastical versus imperial power, as well as during the Civil War between King Stephen and the empress Maud. This setting is similar to the situation during which the Brother Cadfael novels occur.

As mentioned in the title and the comment above, the overarching them of the book is the decades-long building of a cathedral at the Kingsbridge Priory, amidst much corruption, political manipulation, slaughter, and evil aimed at Prior Philip's Benedictine monastery. However, Follett has created a novel that possesses stories within stories within the primary theme. In it, we meet some of the most loving, if sometimes eccentric, people, along with destructive, power-seeking, and envious ecclesiastical and political figures. Follett does not spare anyone her or his weaknesses and faults, including the most significant protagonists. Nor does he cease to decry the sheer brutality of Earl William and Bishop Waleran Bigod, the primate of Kingsbridge.

The author creates a cast of many protagonists as well as antagonists who are central to creating destructive challenges for the Prior to build the cathedral. Church corruption is made clear, as is the use of political people and men-at-arms to effect the plans of Bigod to destroy Philip. Follett has clearly done considerable research, and blends historical persons with fictional characters very well.

At times, I thought the author could begin to tie up the narrative but he elected to create yet one catastrophe after another. In the beginning of the novel, the writing could be described as simplistic, but it evened off later into a respectable and engrossing narrative. If one is interested in Medieval history, the role of Church and State during this era, and a plethora of characters, plots, and subplots, this book is recommended. One gets a sense of monastic living, the lives of serfs and peasants, and the overall life of clerics in this work. In addition, the age-old themes of good and evil underlie all the dynamics in the story.
I once read an interview by one of my favorite indie authors, Matt Schiariti, and he listed this book as his all time favorite. I bought this book later on this year, but put off reading it because IT IS OVER 1000 PAGES - OH MAI GAWD!

But, wanting to look cool I decided to give it a try. Honestly, it didn't sound like anything I'd be interested in... so I didn't have any expectations.

And then I started it, and whoa man. I got sucked in.

There's so much drama in this book. Right when you think one thing is resolved, something else pops up. Oh, and I cried. I don't even know how many times. I also lost a lot of sleep.

Despite the amount of pages, I flew through this book.

This takes place over an amount of decades with lots of characters. But they're all written so well, even the ones that only show up for a couple pages, that they are all distinctive. And there are so many intertwined stories, but there wasn't any times where I was confused about what was going on.

After finishing it, I brought it to my dad and told him he has to read it. I very rarely make recommendations to my father. (This is the second book I've told him to read in the last five years.)

Major thing to point out - the woman in this story are ah-may-zing. Yes, it's historical and things were different back then. But they were all written as strong, independent, and Ellen was totally the most sane character in the entire book. My only complaint is that there wasn't enough focus on her.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes drama and has any interest on 12th century England.