This book is like the book before the Pillar of the Earth in that it is about the lives of three or four main characters throughout their lives of childhood through adulthood seen through their troubles and hopes every so often in the the city of Kingsbridge, two hundred years after. It starts with two family, the family of Gwenda, who is poor and steals from Merthin and Ralph, making them without broke. It is a book that is epic with their struggle between the them along with other characters, in which some stands in their ways through the hate between certain characters by making lives bad. For example, not allowing things to be build or allowed land to be owned. Then halfway throughout the book turns to the problem of the Black Death of how it spreads across Europe. Also throughout the book, the men uses their dominates to get their sexual needs fulfilled.

I would have give this book five stars, but does the book really has to end on a happy ending before the full life of the characters are seen?

3.5⭐️

Well, to go from The Pillars of the Earth to... this was definitely a sobering experience. It’s almost hard to believe that both books were written by the same author.

The two crowning jewels of TPotE were the fascinating & unforgettable characters and the ‘I can’t put this book down even for a minute’ plot that engrossed you from page one right down to the very last paragraph.
None of which WWE seemed to have.
I hated the characters. They were inconsistent and a walking contradiction at best and the story just seemed to drag on.

The thing is, if you judge this book as its own entity without trying to compare it to its predecessor then it’s a great piece of historical fiction infused with real-world event, however, being that it is a second book in a series (albeit two centuries apart) one can’t help but put one against the other in every aspects of its construction.

World Without End, a follow-up to Ken Follett’s surprise bestseller Pillars of the Earth, steals a page from the Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure playbook. A motley collection of insipid characters – if possible, even stupider and less realistic than Bill & Ted – get into a time machine and travel back to year 1327 and the village of Kingsbridge…

Wait. Oh, wait.

There are no time machines? The characters in World Without End are supposed to represent actual people from the 14th century?

Well.

I read Pillars of the Earth as something of a lark. For one, I enjoy grandly ambitious, watermelon-sized novels, packed with blood and strife and minutely-detailed, anatomically precise sex scenes. I love excess – all the better to feel lost in a different world. I was also a fan of Follett’s earlier thrillers, which relied on precision plots, tissue thin characters, and yes, lots of sex, to tell crackerjack stories. Eye of the Needle and The Key to Rebecca are marvelously quick reads; meanwhile, the explicit hand-jobs detailed in Night Over Water turned me into a man almost overnight.

In that mindset, I was able to enjoy Follett’s foray into the realm of historical fiction, a tenuous place where copious research often rests uneasily with under-drawn characters. I felt that Pillars of the Earth had many problems. It was poorly paced, the dialogue was robotic, the characters were plot-pawns, and anyone paying the least bit of attention knew exactly how every minor and major mystery was going to be resolved. Still, there was enjoyment to be had in the research that Follett crammed into every page, from the composition of the bread, to the building of a cathedral. There was also a great deal of unintentional hilarity, much of it spawning from Follett’s obsession with his characters’ pubic hair.

World Without End is a sequel in spirit to that earlier novel. It shares the same town – Kingsbridge – but none of the same characters. Reading one book is not required to understand the other. World Without End also shares many of the faults of Pillars of the Earth. It is, in other words, just as horrible. But for whatever reason – bad mood, fit of pique, utter irrationality – I have decided that I hate World Without End. Oh, it still gave me some laughs, just like the first one; this time, though, I’m not giving it the stars.

And yes, I realize that any criticism of World Without End or Ken Follett is like whizzing into the ocean. The man is Teflon-coated and critic-proof; if he ever feels bad about the criticism leveled against him, he has millions of dollars with which to dry his leaking eyes.

I certainly don’t bear him any malice. I will continue to read his books. Indeed, I have already started the next book in a proposed trilogy, Fall of Giants.

It just needs to be said that this book is awful, in every way a book can be awful.

I should say something about the plot: there is no plot.

Well, that’s not quite accurate. To be more precise, this book has an Alphabet Plot. This is a phrase I invented to describe a book that resembles – more than anything else – the 300 meter hurdles. It starts with the “A” story, resolves that, moves on to the “B” story, resolves that, moves onto the “C” story, resolves that, and etc, etc. Right up until the last page, Follett sticks to this simple formula: (1) introduce a difficulty for his characters to overcome; (2) have them despair; (3) have them come up with a plan; (4) the plan works!; (5) the characters believe (stupidly, it turns out) that all is right with the world; and (6) a new difficulty arises for the characters to overcome…

This pattern is so distinct, so telegraphed, that it doesn’t take you long before you can foresee the problem and the solution before either are introduced by the author.

Follett tries to give this shaggy storyline some coherence by creating a bookend mystery to overlay all the other happenings. The novel actually begins with the main characters as children, out playing in the woods. On All Hallows Day, these kids witness a brutal fight that leaves two men dead and one man wounded. The cause and the consequences of this moment “lingers” over all the events of the next 900 pages. And by lingers, I mean that Follett sometimes refers to it. The problem with this framing device is that the initial mystery is not mystifying; that you forget about it almost as soon as it happens; that the payoff comes too late; and that the payoff is underwhelming. Actually, underwhelming is not the right word. The word I’m looking for is nonexistent. Yes, that’s better. The payoff is nonexistent.

Thus, you have an essentially plot-less book, with no real through-line, that follows a collection of cardboard cutouts characters from 1327 to 1361.

If I were being charitable, I could almost dub this a multi-faceted bildungsroman that follows Follett’s creations from childhood to adulthood. Of course, in the typical bildungsroman, the characters change and grow in some way. In this book, however, the characters are not even human: they are medieval robots who lack personality, charisma, charm, and anything resembling the human spark.

The center of Follett’s novel is a young woman named Caris. She is your typical 21st century girl. She is smart, outspoken, ambitious, and wants to become a doctor. In other words, the exact opposite of what she is supposed to be: an English peasant girl.

In all seriousness, though, I give Follett a lot of credit in his intent. He isn’t an author to create token female characters. Quite often, he puts women front-and-center in his novels. And these are the type of women we – in the 21st century – want our daughters to be: competent and take-charge; independent; smart; willful; and driven. Far be it for me to mock Follett for this, when so many authors and film directors treat women as adornments.

Still, Follett has a serious subtlety problem that undermines everything that Caris is supposed to be. I will take it as a given that Caris, as the heroine of a 1,000 page novel, might be an outlier; that is, atypical from the other Middle Aged peasant stock. But if you are going to get me to accept that conceit, you have to show me that it is deserved. Here, Caris is just a transplant from a different millennium. She defies religious authority, she doesn’t want to get married, she runs her own business, she dabbles in situational-homosexuality, and she discovers the germ theory of medicine (!). It all becomes a bit much, especially since Follett isn’t able to make me believe a single thing. He tells us that Caris is smart, all right, but he isn’t able to show it. For instance, here is a typical bit of dialogue:

SILLY PEASANT: I don’t know how to solve this problem.
CARIS: It’s simple. You just need to do this obvious thing, this obvious thing, and this obvious thing.
SILLY PEASANT: You might be a woman…but you are a genius!
ME: No! You’re both idiots! Good luck with the bubonic plague, jackasses.

Okay, so I made that up. But you get the point.

As you might have guessed, Caris is a Good Guy, as opposed to a Bad Guy. For those of you who appreciate streamlined storytelling, there is no Ambiguous Guy.

Caris is in love with Merthin. Merthin is a builder-savant. Even though he has never had any formal training, he knows everything there ever was about architecture. He loves Caris, but is upset because she doesn’t want to get married (“marriage is so 12th century”). The biggest problem with this, the central romantic relationship of the novel, is that Caris and Merthin actually seem to hate each other most of the time. They are just like the couple in NBC’s execrable sitcom Whitney. Despite the fact that they are always fighting, and despite the fact that their worldviews are completely inapposite, we are asked demanded to accept their fairy tale romance.

There are several bad guys in this book. Some of them are dispatched quite early; others have to wait for their comeuppance. Spoiler alert: all the bad guys eventually get their comeuppance. If this surprises you, please contact me for some investment opportunities that I am making up as we speak.

The chief Black Hat of Ye Old Novel is Ralph.

Now, there will certainly be times in World Without End when you will get characters confused. This is because they are all the same; which is to say, they’re all one-dimensional wisps of smoke with names and occupations. To this day, I cannot tell you the difference between Elfric and Wulfric.

Ralph is different, though. You will remember Ralph because of this mnemonic device I am giving you now: Rapey Ralph.

Ralph, you see, likes to rape. And when he is not raping, he is thinking about rape. Every time Ralph meets another female, Follett digs deep into his psychology to describe precisely the dirty thoughts that Ralph is having. And Ralph is not discerning. When he sees a chubby girl, it turns him on, and when he sees a skinny girl, it turns him on, and when he sees an older woman, it turns him on…and you get the point. In short, the character of Ralph was written by a 13 year-old boy who is approximately fifteen years away from ever talking to a woman.

I refuse to call Ralph an avatar of anything, yet he is emblematic of a strong rape fetish that courses through World Without End like poison in the bloodstream.

Fetishes turn up a lot in Follett novels. As I mentioned above, Pillars of the Earth was marked by its detailed descriptions of pubic hair, and the way Follett’s characters obsessed over their hirsuteness. This was hilarious for many reasons, but mainly because people in the Middle Ages were engaged in a minute-to-minute struggle not to scratch themselves on the arm and die of a raging infection. I’m guessing that bikini waxing and body-scaping were low on their list of concerns.

Here, the fetish is rape, and this is less funny. Rather, it’s not funny at all, except in the way that you laugh when something utterly ridiculous appears before your eyes. Rapey Ralph and his rape-dreams are pretty low. Things get even worse when Gwendolyn, who has “the look of a determined rodent,” is raped by Ralph and begins to enjoy it. Also, this is the second time that Gwendolyn is raped. She also started to enjoy it the first time, before she stabbed the eyeballs out of her attacker. I wish I was making this up.

Even if you can ignore the anachronisms, the lack of forward momentum, the rape fantasies, you cannot ignore the dialogue. The hardest part of writing a novel is dialogue; Follett seems to have recognized this, and decided not to try. His characters utter things that an American teenager would loathe to text. Most exchanges are purely expository, and almost all of them include idioms and phrasings that belong solely to our time, and not theirs. Follett couldn’t have better undercut his own research and attempts at verisimilitude if he’d tried. (And maybe he did try. Maybe this awful dialogue was part of a bet with his publisher. “Hey, I bet you that even if I write this s—t, I’ll still sell millions of books.” If so, he won that bet).

So yes, the dialogue sucks. Like I said, though, dialogue is hard. What about the prose? Well, the prose is… Let’s just say that if you played a drinking game in which you took a shot every time you read a cliché – “she burst into tears,” for instance – you should definitely expect to vomit the next day.

During the course of this disaster, Follett attempts to weave a couple big historical events into the mix. He has to, because this time around, there is no cathedral to build. The two marquee happenings are the Hundred Years’ War and the Black Death.

Of the two, neither are effectively utilized. The scenes of the Hundred Years’ War, set in France and featuring Rapey Ralph and the battle of Crecy, are historically accurate but hopelessly dull. I’m not sure why, but Follett seems incapable of epic-style storytelling. He does (relatively) well when he sticks to his central location of Kingsbridge. When he starts expanding the scope of his tale, however, he loses his sure-handed grasp of the material. The scenes set in France are inert and stage-bound. Even though he is an author, with no limits save his imagination, he writes his battle scenes as though he was on a budget.

Follett is only marginally more successful with his usage of the Black Death. Admittedly, when the Plague first appears, it does so effectively, driving the plot in the required direction. After awhile, though, it becomes a deus ex machina: whenever Follett needs someone killed off, the Plague returns. Around page 800, I was actively hoping for the Black Death to finish off every last person, just so I could toss this book off a moving train and start fresh.

I want to be clear that I do not hate this book. Hate is a strong word, and World Without End does not have the requisite content to create any real emotion.

I bought this copy used for 1 cent, plus 4 dollars shipping. No one forced me to read it. I put it on my exercise bike and read 50 to 70 pages every time I worked out. It cost me $4.01 and helped me lose a couple pounds. Still, it’s a piece of crap.

The true and actual reason I started reading Pillars of the Earth and World Without End is simple: I had just finished George R.R. Martin’s A Dance With Dragons and I needed a swords-and-sex fix to tide me over for the next decade, when Martin’s next novel may (or may not) be released.

In comparing Martin to Follett, I discovered a certain irony. Follett has devoted an enormous amount of time and effort into making his novels historically accurate. He has strived (and succeeded, largely) in getting all the small details right. You can read his novels and learn a lot about the Middle Ages – the feudal system, the way clothing was dyed, the way a bridge was constructed.

Martin’s books, on the other hand, exist in a land of his own creation. There are fire-breathing dragons, the Red God, decades-long winters, and White Walkers who implacably roam the Earth. Martin’s novels are fantasies; they take place in a land that never existed.

Yet, everything about Martin’s Westeros feels real. And everything about Follett’s England feels artificial.

n  —El hombre que prepara ungüentos y medicinas se llama boticario, pero una mujer que hace lo mismo se arriesga a que la llamen bruja.n

[ 3.5 / 5 ☆ ]

Seguimos con la saga de Kingsbridge de nuestro amigo Ken Follett. Un mudo sin fin se corona como el libro más largo, con una extensión de casi 1.800 páginas en su formato digital. Un reto, sin duda, que a mí me ha tomado más de mes y medio pero que a pesar de todo, ha supuesto una montaña rusa a lo largo de su lectura.

Algo que me gustó mucho de su predecesor, Los pilares de la tierra es que Follett no permite que el lector se aburra. Constantemente pasan cosas y los personajes parecen no tener un respiro. Además, el villano de la primera novela, William, está sumamente bien construido y los personajes protagónicos suscitan interés hagan lo que hagan. Sin embargo, aquí en ese sentido Un mudo sin fin se ha quedado atrás.

Fácilmente la novela necesita de unas 400 o 500 páginas para arrancar, lo cual es una barbaridad desde el punto de vista de la cantidad, no tanto referido al porcentaje total de la misma (entorno al 25%). Pero aun así, son 500 páginas que te tienes que comer con patatas intentando comprender a dónde vamos. Porque, si bien Los pilares de la tierra tenía como meta final la construcción de la catedral, aquí, ¿qué?

Merthin y Caris han sido los personajes que han llevado el peso de la historia fundamentalmente y no es hasta la aparición de la peste bubónica que realmente me han interesado sus vidas. Sus idas y venidas románticas me la han traído al pairo -hablando en plata-, igual que me ha dado exactamente igual la vida de Gwenda y Wulfric, entre otras cosas porque hasta que llegué al 30 o 35% de la novela no me enteré de quién era quién, y eso para mí ha sido bastante incómodo, porque ya no sabía de quién estábamos hablando. Sinceramente, albergaba esperanzas con el villano escogido para esta historia, Ralph, pero ni siquiera él ha calado como sí lo hizo William, lo cual le ha restado muchísimo interés a la historia, porque para mi gusto es un personaje a medio hacer, a caballo entre ser bueno e intentar emular ser malo.

En general, me parece que todo lo que era bueno en Los pilares de la tierra aquí le han dado la vuelta para intentar dar, en Un mudo sin fin una perspectiva distinta de los mismos cargos en la misma ciudad: un clero malvado, un obispo majete, una cofradía gremial buena, pero mantenemos al conde de Shiring siendo bueno, hasta que al final aparece otro que se vuelve malo como lo fue en el anterior libro. No sé. Creo que la estrategia no ha llegado a funcionar. Y por descontado, le sobran unos cuantos cientos de páginas.

Voy a seguir leyendo la saga, eso sí. Con esperanzas de que la cosa vaya un poco hacia arriba, o se mantenga, al menos.

Alla fine deciderò di non leggere più Ken Follet! ma non è possibile essere così banali...i protagonisti buoni vengono vessati per 1000 lunghe pagine poi nelle ultime 100 trovano la scala reale pigliatutto e vincono il piatto. Meglio il Ken Follett delle spie: se ho dato 3 stellette è perchè comunque l'ambientazione medievale è ben resa, l'atmosfera storica rispettata e i personaggi non sono burattini senza vita propria.

Ken Follet sets ‘World Without End’ in the late Middle Ages, which covers the years 1250-1500. This novel begins in 1327 and ends in 1361, spanning 34 years in the lives of main characters, Caris, Merthin, Gwenda, and Ralph. As the novel opens, Gwenda is 8 years old and pickpockets Sir Gerald during a grand church service. Sir Gerald is the father of Merthin, 11 years old, and Ralph, 10 years old. Caris is 10 years old, the daughter of Alderman Edmund Wooler. Merthin, small and slight has fashioned a bow and arrow and goes into the forest to show off his skills to Caris. They are accompanied by Ralph and Gwenda. The children hide when they hear angry voices coming their way. A knight is chased into the woods and shortly a battle ensues. Ralph comes to the knight’s aid with Merthin’s bow and arrow, and soon two men lie dead. All the children run away save Merthin. The knight buries a letter in the woods and tells Merthin to dig it up after the knight (Thomas) dies. This is an intriguing plot development; the knight takes shelter in Kingsbridge priory and becomes a monk. The hidden letter will come up a couple of times during the narrative and at the end, Follet reveals it’s message. I did not find the hidden letter to be an effective plot element until the end of the book, and 1000 pages later, it's message was rather disappointing to me.

The town of Kingsbridge plays a huge role in this novel. Merthin becomes apprenticed to a carpenter, Ralph becomes squire to Earl Roland of Shiring, Caris is her father’s right hand as far as town business is concerned, and Gwenda, whose parents are landless laborers, is very poor and struggles to survive. As Follet develops his characters, we see Merthin and Caris fall in love and their on again off again romance carries us through the bulk of the novel. Caris is interested in healing but finds she cannot become a doctor because that isn’t an option for females. Instead, she learns all she can from Mattie, the village wise woman and apothecary. When the sick send for Mattie, she always says, if God wills it to be so, and will take no credit for healing. To know more than the monks and nuns during these times was dangerous. Merthin’s knowledge of building and carpentry soon exceeds his teacher, Eldric. Merthin is observant, intelligent, and wise. He and Caris are born leaders and both interested in the town’s growth and wellbeing. Merthin’s brother Ralph is an exact opposite. He’s cruel and depicted without a conscience. Ralph has no redeeming qualities.

This is an awesome novel with so much to teach about this historical time period. Follett has to be some kind of genius to weave the tapestry of this plot so intricately. He will start a plot element and forsake it, then bring it up hundreds of pages later. He also uses irony very effectively. I do think the characters are somewhat flat. Caris and Merthin are too good. Ralph is too wicked, although it must be said, sometimes reality will give us just such a wicked person; the sociopath. Gwenda, in my mind, is more multifaceted. She was my favorite character. She grew and changed over the span of the novel.

Follett depicts monks in leadership as being mostly duplicitous and manipulative. It’s not a pretty picture! According to Wikipedia, the church was a major landowner, and besides rent from its tenants, also collected tithes. With all this money coming in, perhaps it was an incentive to bad behavior. Not only that, in ‘World Without End’ the monks can’t be counted on when the bubonic plague becomes an epidemic. They high tail it out of town seeking safer refuge, leaving the nuns behind to deal with the sickness, death, and fear. Forty to sixty percent of the population would soon be dead. Monks would be unable to escape this virulent disease. Half their population will also die.

One of the main themes in ‘World Without End’ is open minded progress versus narrow minded backwardness. Caris and Merthin’s powers of observation and intelligence are presented as the high road. They both care about the economics and well being of the townsfolk. The church and nobility are self serving and do what they can to keep the economy stagnant. When Caris finds a way to create her own red dye, she enables the town to move forward. When Merthin builds a bridge with two lanes to prevent queues, he enables progress.

Another theme is the powerlessness of women. Caris battles the church and her society’s preconceived notions of what her place in life should be. Gwenda, coming from an impoverished background, has to survive by her wits. At this time in history, a married woman found to have committed adultery would be hanged. Arrogant Ralph constantly takes advantage of women. Ralph’s interactions with Gwenda show his disregard and seeming hatred of women.

The main detractor of this novel, for me, is its length. Wow! It’s a tome. If I had dropped it on my foot, no doubt there would have been a fracture. I think I have some attention deficit. It’s hard for me to focus on a book of this length. But, I’m glad I did. This is an excellent way to learn history!

Book 2 in the Knightsbridge series first published 2007.

Calling this a book would be a mistake; it’s a tome, but a highly entertaining tome for sure.

In reality what this is, is a medieval version of ‘The Bold and The Beautiful’. For those of you that are unfamiliar with this TV show it’s a daytime soap opera.

This book has all the ingredients that make for a successful soap opera. There is murder, lying, cheating, conniving, back stabbing, lots of bastards, the biblical and non biblical types, greed, avarice, rape and pillage and strangest of all the plague. How portentous is it that I should have been reading this just as corvid 19 is rearing its ugly head.

For those readers who have read the first book of this series you will find pretty much the same content as has gone before.

The story concerns the denizens of Kightsbridge. The hardships of the peasants, the trials and tribulations of the merchants, the privileged lives of the aristocracy and the dominance of the church over everyone and everything.

This might sound just a bit ho hum but I couldn’t get enough of it. The characters are strongly defined and you will soon finding yourself loving and hating them in equal measure.
For a book that is a 1000 + pages long it managed to hold my interest from the beginning to the very end.

A entertaining 4 star read.

Ultimately, not as good as the first book. Still enjoyable and massive in scope. But I didn't feel as much for these characters. I might write more at some point but I'm a little busy to write reviews at the moment.

4.5 stars.
One should applaud Follett for penning down a 1000 odd paged tome which is riveting from page 1, and which is able to sustain the flitty reader's (mine) attention till.the last.
This epic saga shows us how Kingsbridge is, a couple of decades after Jack.the builder built the church and csthedral(happenings of book 1). This story tells us about the lives of Merthyn, Caris, Gwenda, Ralph, Philemon, Wulfric and scores of others living their dramatic lives full of twists and turns and reads like a soap opera showcasing the lives in nunnery and priory, the trials and tribulations of noblemen, earls, traders as well as the poor; and how morality as well as cunning can indiscriminately choose to dwell in the minds of rich, poor, noble and saints alike.
Lots of info about bubonic plague, medieval treatment methods and bloodletting which I relished.
I thoroughly enjoyed the rich tale, spent nearly a month in Kingsbridge and feel a bit homesick for the small cathedral town and its occupants.

Set two centuries after Pillars of the Earth, the people of Kingsbridge are at it again. The cathedral built in Pillars is in disrepair after part of the roof caved in, the bridge collapsed, and the prior is dead. Also, the constant maneuvering continues...

So, I fell into a trap with this one. After devouring Dinocalypse Now in a morning, my girlfriend asked if I managed to read an entire book in four hours. I said I had and she slammed me with this, saying it shouldn't take me more than a few days. Sighing, before I knew it, I was engrossed and asking her if Ralph was going to be the asshole rapist bully in this one. I still hate that Will Hamleigh!

Much like Pillars of the Earth, World Without End follows the lives of a number of characters; Merthin the carpenter, his brother Ralph the squire, a poor girl named Gwenda, Wulfric the laborer, Godwyn the monk, and several others. As I predicted, Ralph was the asshole rapist of the book. What a nun mugger that guy was!

As with Pillars of the Earth, twists abound and the 14th century is not a good place to be a woman. Hell, it doesn't sound like that great of a place to be a man either, but the women get the short end of the stick for the most part. There's just as much scheming as in the first book and just as many people making decisions that would later bite them in the ass.

While World Without End happens years later, it very much picks up the style and flavor of The Pillars of the Earth. So much that it's very nearly the same book with slightly different characters. As near as I can tell, Follett's master plot generator goes something like this:

1. Things are going good
2. A problem arises
3. Problem solved, leading to unforeseen results
4. Goto 1

It's still a fun read that messes with your emotions but some of the magic is gone once you catch the rhythm of the plot. Kind of like how M. Night Shyamalan's movies aren't as fun once you start trying to figure out what the big twist is going to be as soon as the movie starts. It was exhausting to read at times, not because of the prose, which is breezy and accessible, but because of plot twists every 6.5 pages. It doesn't really build toward anything besides the next iteration of the good guys getting screwed over and the bad guys having good things happen to them.

Since it's hard to review a book of this size without revealing too much, here are some closing points:
1. The late 1300's were just as rape-y as the 1100's of the first book.
2. I wanted to smack Merthin silly. Then again, we men tend to do stupid things when sex is on the table. Or bed, floor, car hood, etc...
3. Godwyn, though one of the good guys at the beginning, is still a tool.
4. Accusing women of being a witch is some serious shit.
5. Ken Follett and George R.R. Martin both went to the school of screwing over characters as much as possible.
6. Getting flayed would suck.
7. The blurb mentions the Black Death but it doesn't make an appearance until after the halfway mark.
8. Every time someone mentioned the bishop, I thought of a certain Monty Python sketch.
9. My favorite line was "Sleeping next to her was like lying with a dead cow."

Three stars. I think I'm Folletted out for the time being.

*** 3.75 ***

n  "...“You see, all that I ever held dear has been taken from me," she said in a matter-of-fact tone. "And when you've lost everything-" Her facade began to crumble, and her voice broke, but she made herself carry on. "When you've lost everything, you've got nothing to lose.”..."n

This is the truth about this book, similar issues I had with "The Pillars of the Earth" - Ken Follet piles up small, every day problems that were typical for all in Medieval Europe, and adds to them more and more and more problems, big and small, until he not only ruins the spirit of the characters in the book, but succeeds very well in destroying any optimism or hope the reader might have kindled for them.... I was so depressed while reading book one, I had to take a month in between, so I can get my Happy back. I feel like this book is even more devastating emotionally to me than the previous one. You might say, but of course, in the first book there was no Plague, while here it is very prominent and we all know that more than half of Europe's population was wiped out by the merciless infection, bringing devastation on a scale we can't even imagine today. But this is not the only reason this whole tome had a solid core of depression to it. It is the thick fog of misfortune and crap everyone with some measure of decency had to thread through on every page, while those with darkness in their hearts kept on prospering and rejoicing with every evil deed perpetuated on the weak and unfortunate. Follet does that with no respite for the entirety of the book. Just when you think something might happen that would make all the struggles of our characters worth it, they still have to pay a heavy price for it and the feeling of hopeless helplessness that emotes from the page infuses into the reader until you wear it as a second skin... At one point I became well trained - the author gives us struggle toward something, we have hope and even a good result, only to follow it up with something to put us back in our place, cowering in fear and despair back into the dark and dusty corner of a surfs' latrine.

n  "...“My father hated people who preached about morality. We're all good when it suits us, he used to say: that doesn't count. It's when you want so badly to do something wrong - when you're about to make a fortune from a dishonest deal, or kiss the lovely lips of your neighbor's wife, or tell a lie to get yourself out of terrible trouble - that's when you need the rules. Your integrity is like a sword, he would say: you shouldn’t wave it until you’re about to put it to the test.”..."n

I was angry throughout most of the book. Don't get me wrong. It was not anger because the writing was terrible or the storytelling inadequate. The opposite. I was riveted to the story and even did not sleep last night so I could finish it up today. The author has done his research into the time period perfectly and the story is more than realistic, it is down right depressingly so. I know that what my 21st century heart truly rebels against is the historical truth of how one people, who happened to have been born to a class of privilege and influence, exerted their power over other people, who happen to be born in a circumstance that makes them into almost a property of the other, stripping them from everything we believe to be a human right, all the way down to the smallest choices over their livelihood and personhood... My free-loving spirit wanted to spit in the faces of the "Lords" and "Nobility" and kick them in the balls, show the bullies that we will not let them bully us or anyone else, but I had to let the author lead me through his story and hope he would take us to a place where we would have some literary vengeance and a pay-off for all the hopeless emotions he put us through...

n  "...“Don’t worry. We who are born poor have to use cunning to get what we want. Scruples are for the privileged.”..."n

We have several main players in this tale of mid-1300's Kingsbridge, two centuries after the story of Tom Builder, Jack, Aliena, and Prior Phillip. Kingsbridge Priory is well established and the town is prosperous. There are many descendants of Jack and Aliena Fitzgerald, and they are representatives of all the social classes of the time. Our main protagonist Merthin and his brother, the heartless monster of the age, Ralph, are just two of those coming from the branch of the Earls, but long ago fallen into poverty and as kids, circumstances make them and their parents dependents of the Priory. Ralph, being a big boy and physically fit, is given into the care of the current Earl as a squire, while Merthin, having not been blessed with great physique, goes as an unpaid apprentice to a carpenter-builder. He falls for the daughter of a prosperous wool merchant, and the rest is history.

Caris meets Merthin, Ralph, Gwenda and her brother Philemon while playing in church as kids and their lives change for ever when they encounter a fleeing knight, wounded in the forest. From that day on their faiths are intertwined in intrigue, power-struggles, murder, secrets and a never-ending personal loves and hatreds, which shape their actions and their personalities on the long run. Although there are some redemption for some of the main characters, the overall hardships they go through are demoralizing. No wonder people thought of themselves as old at the age of 40 and ancient if they were able to reach fifty years old.

Caris was strong and independent of spirit, but she also came from a place where she had been given a sense of self-worth since she was born. Merthin and Ralph were raised to think of themselves as better than the rest, despite their impoverished state, but Gwenda and Philemon came from the lowest of the low and their parents only made them feel and be even lower than that. My heart broke for both of them when we first met them. As much as I loved and respected Caris, despite her acting ridiculously irrational at times, Gwenda was the one whose story I couldn't get enough of. I hurt for her, I loved for her, I was angry and disappointed by her, I wanted to shake her and and hug her alternatively, and I wept with her, but I was just as taken by her perseverance and strength, both in body and mind, which made her survive in this miserable time with so little going for her. She was so flawed, so real, that it hurt. And I loved reading about her, every single word.

n  "...“When you were trying to enforce law and order, it was difficult to explain that the rules did not actually apply to you personally.”..."n

So, despite this book depressing the hell out of me for most of the 1014 pages, I am still glad I was able to read and had the patience to actually finish it, because there were misfortunes and side story-lines, which I felt were there just to pile on the misery and not to add anything to the overall plot arc, which made me furious for being there and I was tempted to just lose the book somewhere before I destroy it in futile rage. I would still recommend it to those who loved the first installment in the series and those who love a realistic but slow portrayal of 14th century Europe in the mids of the Black Plague.

n  "...“You didn’t ask for a priest.” “Whether I’ve been good or bad, I don’t think God will be fooled by a last-minute change of heart.” ..."n

Now I wish you all Happy Reading and my you always find what you Need in the pages of a good book!!!

4.5 stars rounded down.

This is the sequel to Pillars of the Earth, but can be read as a stand alone novel. In many respects, it would be better if read as a stand alone novel, because there are so many similarities to the first novel. This one takes place about 200 years after the end of Pillars of the Earth, again in the town of Kingsbridge, during the 1300s. Although the story is a compelling read, it has many of the same tropes as the first novel: the ambitious builder who loves a woman he cannot have; the independent and intelligent woman who must defer to men; the corrupt Prior of the cathedral; the villainous Earl of Shiring; the honest and hard working serfs; the amoral flunkies of the Prior and the Earl, just to name a few. There is a soap opera quality to some of the events in the book: a Perils of Pauline set in Medieval times. And just when you think things can’t get any worse, the Plague strikes.

There are some new twists to the above mentioned tropes, and despite the fact that you feel like you’ve read all this before, Follett just sucks you into the story. At 1014 pages, you sometimes feel like this is the book without end, but it is well paced and the pages seem to turn themselves. It is a story that you can get lost in.

Although I really enjoyed this book, I think I liked Pillars of the Earth better, maybe because it was fresher. But World Without End is good in its own right.