World Without End | Ken Follett

World Without End | Ken Follett | Excellent - I could hardly put it down

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World Without End

	World Without End Ken Follett Dutton Adult, 2007 - 1024 pages average customer review:based on 387 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The Great Soap

World Without End has all the elements of a great soap opera. There was never a point when I wasn't eager to know what would happen next.

There is love, envy, brutality, ruthlessness, greed, deviousness, selflessness and even a plague. If this is not enough for you, there's also murder, rape, kidnapping, and a mystery. Surprisingly, the plot has everything except incest

For me, WWE is more interesting than Pillars of the Earth in that it is a close examination of the human aspects of the time, focusing on the customs and the ways people of different rank related to each other.

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Excellent - I could hardly put it down

World Without End was extremely engaging. It was entertaining and took me through a wide range of emotions. Ken Follet masterfully takes readers into the psychological make up of his characters. This includes the heros that you love and the trouble makers/villians that frustrate. The book was also historically informative. I loved how the author gave insight and perspective to a very truamatic episode in history.

GREAT SEQUEL!

A great read. My book club read "Pillars of Society," and I loved it, but didn't know about this sequel...a wonderful surprise. Ken Follett is amazing. This book offers a great escape to a different time and way of life....but is it really that different than today?? I highly recommend this book to everyone.

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Sequel tells us a lot about how we've changed in 20 years

Follett finally completed the sequel to his evergreen historical novel, The Pillars of the Earth, and although I was compelled by the story enough to read all 1024 pages in a week, I was saddened at how poorly the book compares with its predecessor.

It is interesting to consider the nearly 20 years between the first book and this sequel. Many things have changed in our culture since then, leading Follett to inject even more egregious anachronisms into this book than the first. For example, the characters at one point fret over the self-esteem of a teenage girl. There are many further examples but I will spare you.

More telling is the apparent shift Follett has undergone in what he believes we want to read about. For example, the first book barely treated homosexuality, despite the many opportunities to explore it in a monastery. The second, now twenty years deeper into the gay rights movement, explores gay relationships with a frank openness more consistent with San Francisco circa 2000 than the Britain of the 1300s.

This observation aside, I was personally disappointed that the author did not again craft a thoughtful and multi-dimensional portrayal of a man of faith. The character of Prior Philip stands as the hallmark achievement of the first novel. Prior Philip was a man filled with the desire to do what is right by God and by his fellowmen but sometimes unable to know what would be right and what cost was worth bearing to do it. This is my personal experience of what most spiritual leaders are like.

In contrast, the religious figures in the sequel are all one-dimensional sycophants or toadies, ingratiating themselves with higher ups for their own personal ambition, betraying their own principles regularly, and considering faith a stepping stone rather than an end in itself.

The one sympathetic, intelligent, and thoughtful religious character is a woman who is technically an atheist, and only joined a convent to avoid a worse fate. She is consistently smarter and more capable than all other religious figures and her atheism is continually cited as the engine behind her industriousness and her unique interpersonal gifts.

I've met atheists like that, but I've also met religious people like that and you'd think that a novel that spans fifty years of religious life in a town where all activity centers on a cathedral might include even one intelligent, sincere devout person? Just one?

The differences between these two books tells us much about ourselves and the kinds of things authors and editors believe we want to read. I wonder what a third book, written 20 years from now, would say about us?

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Enjoyable but far too long; too much rehashing of the PILLARS plots, themes, and characters

This book is enjoyable as an addendum to The Pillars of the Earth, but could not possibly stand alone on its own. The entire plot of Pillars is laboriously rehashed, element by element, and virtually every main character from this book has a direct Pillars equivalent. Worst of all, we are often lamely reminded of the characters' direct descent from the Pillars characters, in cheap romance-novel fashion.

*SPOILER ALERT*

How bad are the similarities? Well, put it this way: There's a character, Ralph, who is an amalgamation of William Hamleigh and Richard from Pillars, and he even organizes the forest's outlaws (just as Richard did).

Other complete knockoffs:
Merthin = Jack Builder (down to the red hair)
Caris = Aliena (her and Merthin are even kept apart in near-identicle fashion, including Merthin's travel abroad)
Wulfric = Tom Builder
Gwenda = Ellen (though this is less so)

And on and on and on.

On the positive side, this book makes an even stronger case for laissez-faire classical liberalism in not-so-subtle examples. This is particularly curious since Follett is a member of the Labour Party, which is socialist, not libertarian-capitalist, in orientation. But it's almost as if Ayn Rand set up some of these plot twists that show the fallibility of central planning and the blessings of economic freedom.

I enjoyed the story, but God, it was long. The end was anything but satisfying. The plot is essentially a succession of events, and the conclusion is anticlimactic. Overall, I think this book was just a way for Follett to make another few million bucks, and in no way approaches the artistry of Pillars. Buyer beware.

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