Books by author: Ken Follett

I first read Pillars of the Earth in college, and I quite liked it then. I was pleased when my book club picked it, because after reading World Without End last year, I was looking for an excuse to revisit Pillars. I'm happy to report that it holds up well.

Pillars of the Earth is centered on the construction of a cathedral at Kingsbridge in twelfth-century England. The prior of the abbey, the master builder and his family, a nearby earl, a displaced brother and sister, and the presiding bishop comprise the core set of characters, and their complex relationships form the core of the novel.

There's nothing fancy about this book. The writing is incredibly straightforward and clear, and the characters are uncomplicated. The joy of the book is in how the dozen or so main characters interact over the course of several decades, how the "good" guys finally prevail and how the "bad" guys fall. It's just good storytelling, plain and simple.

Pillars of the Earth was a departure from Ken Follett's usual spy-thriller novels, but it has endured as his most beloved work. When I was in college, I read at least ten of his novels including Pillars, and I quite enjoyed them. It was good escapist fiction on a level with Michael Crichton's sci-fi thrillers, though perhaps somewhat better-written.

It has been fifteen years since I last picked up a Ken Follett novel, but I'm glad that I picked up World Without End. It's a massive book, weighing in at over 1,000 pages, but it moves quickly. In the first fifty pages, Follett introduces all of the major characters and sets the plot in motion. There are about a dozen key players, all fourteenth-century residents of Kingsbridge, the site of the cathedral built in Pillars of the Earth, and the novel focuses on the web of interrelationships between the players over the course of forty years.

This is a very carefully plotted novel. When I reread the first fifty pages after finishing the whole thing, I was awestruck at how orchestrated the whole thing was. My biggest criticism is that nearly all of the characters are a little too one-dimensional; each can be summed up in a single sentence. Secondarily, I found that the pace was a bit uneven—a little slow in a few places early on and too fast at the very end. A good yarn nonetheless.