Desafortunadamente, tengo responsabilidades en mi vida, como por ejemplo trabajar y dedicar tiempo a mi novia, mi gato, amigos y familia. De lo contrario, hubiese terminado este libro mucho antes, ya que es bastante largo.
A pesar de ser muy largo, Follett tiene una forma de escribir de la cual te atrapá fácilmente, vas siguiendo la historia y la vida de los personajes todo el tiempo.
Es un libro escrito de forma similar a la primera parte (Los pilares de la tierra). El desarrollo de los personajes va cambiando bastante a través del libro, ya sea para bien o para mal. A la vez, vas amando a los buenos y detestando a los malos, por lo que el interés se mantiene activo todo el tiempo.
Al igual que la parte anterior, me adentré muchísimo en los personajes. Creo que todos toman bastante protagonismo, pero Wulfric siento que está de alguna forma sub-valorado. Un personaje que sufrió siempre del cual me encariñé mucho.
Muchísimas gracias por crear a Caris, Merthin, Ralph, Gwenda, Wulfric, Godwyn, Philemon y la ciudad de Kingsbridge, señor Follett. Leeré la próxima parte inmediatamente.

El único motivo por el que le pongo 4 estrellas y no 5 es el hecho de que a veces se carga demasiado a la parte sexual. No soy conservador ni mucho menos, pero siento que a veces daba demasiado detalle explícito cuando ya teníamos la idea de los que se estaba haciendo.

n  We who are born poor have to use cunning to get what we want. Scruples are for the privileged. n

I must confess-- I am addicted to these Ken Follett novels. I finished World Without End and had to pick up A Column of Fire immediately. I'm also going to get to his Century trilogy at some point. These books are bloodstained historical soap operas and I just can't get enough.

Follett knows how to create exactly the right amount of drama and set it to the gory backdrop of history. I've always loved being taken back to times that I've only read about in passing and here we see the horrors of the Black Death up close.

It is one thing to read a textbook about the illness, its symptoms and its wide reach - wiping out up to 60% of Europe's population - but it's another thing entirely to be taken into the lives of characters we come to love and seeing it firsthand. Knowing at any minute that they or their families could be next. It was a truly horrific and frightening disease, and I think the author captures that really well.

Follett once again utilizes a technique that worked very well for him in The Pillars of the Earth - the plot is often driven by our hatred for certain characters. In the previous book, it was William Hamleigh. Here, there are a number of candidates competing for our hatred; namely, Ralph, Godwyn and Philemon. It's pretty effective to despise a character so deeply that we absolutely must read on to see them get their just desserts.

It's also just a fascinating portrait of everyday life in 14th century England. Two hundred years after the events of The Pillars of the Earth, Kingsbridge now has a nunnery (which makes for some interesting politics as the monks try to control the nuns, but they are some seriously badass women) and the Guild plays an important part in decisions for the town, as well as the Priory.

It's hard to explain - between the deaths, disease and war - how much enjoyment there is in the everyday lives of these people, as we live with them through romance, poverty, heartbreak and betrayal. AND these books are so so easy to dip in and out of. I rarely feel ready to commit to a thousand-page book, but I can easily read this alongside other books and return to the story and characters without a problem.

So much fun and drama.

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n  “The hospital was full again. The plague, which had seemed to retreat during the first three months of 1349, came back in April with redoubled virulence. On the day after Easter Sunday, Caris looked wearily at the rows of mattresses crammed together in a herringbone pattern, packed so tightly that the masked nuns had to step gingerly between them. Moving around was a little easier, however, because there were so few family members at the bedsides of the sick. Sitting with a dying relative was dangerous–you were likely to catch the plague yourself–and people had become ruthless. When the epidemic began, they had stayed with their loved ones regardless, mothers with children, husbands with wives, the middle-aged with their elderly parents, love overcoming fear. But that had changed. The most powerful of family ties had been viciously corroded by the acid of death. Nowadays the typical patient was brought in by a mother or father, a husband or wife, who then simply walked away, ignoring the piteous cries that followed them out. Only the nuns, with their face masks and their vinegar-washed hands, defied the disease.” n

Kingsbridge #2: World Without End by Ken Follett. What a book, what a ride. While this is the second book in the series, it can absolutely be read as a stand-alone. The connections to the first book, which took place 200 years prior, have to do with the town itself. Yes, our main characters here are largely descendants of the characters of the first book, but that’s about it.

World Without End takes place in 14th Century England. An unfortunate time to be alive no doubt. Europe was ravaged by war and pestilence, and Follett covers it all spectacularly. We start out in a similar way as the first book; a group of kids (who will become the main characters that we follow throughout their whole lives) witness a knight kill two men who are chasing him. He then buried an earth shattering secret in the Earth, swears the kids to secrecy and enters the priory to become a monk where he will be safe. The kids keep their end of the bargain, and we begin to follow them individually as they grow. Like Book I, Follett plants the seeds of a central mystery in the first chapter, and if you want answers you must read on. We have a knight, a builder, a peasant laborer and a woman who wishes to become a physician. The different directions all of these characters take allows Follett to show us all different aspects of life in the 14th century, and all of their lives are forever tied together. From here, we watch our characters interact with some of the biggest and most terrifying events of world history. The Hundred Years War has begun, the Black Death comes, and the world is changed forever.

The characters in this book are wonderfully done. We have good, bad, and characters who aren’t so cut and dry. There are characters I was rooting for throughout the whole novel, as well as a few that were absolutely awful; some who will make your skin crawl. Hate is a strong word, and a strong feeling, but there are some characters in this book that you will hate. Follett does this so well; your heart breaks for the characters you love as they get knocked down by these truly awful villains, but they never stay down long. The ups and downs throughout the novel really tap into our emotions. We are right there with these characters as they are forced to make all kinds of decisions that will impact the people closest to them, and as they struggle with the questions of morality that we have all faced in one way or another throughout our own lives.

n  ”My father hated people who preached about morality. We are all good when it suits us, she 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 neighbors 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

Follett’s writing, as I’ve said before, is simple yet undeniably effective. The readability of his novels is among the highest I’ve encountered. It picks you up and carries you through the story with zero distractions. You won’t stop to reread a paragraph to ogle the flowery prose, and that’s okay. This writing is a certain kind of simple that is remarkably difficult to replicate, and I would argue it’s even rather rare to be able to write in a way where you almost forget you’re reading. It is pure storytelling, and Follett is as good as anyone I’ve read at telling a truly engaging story and keeping you turning the pages. This book is anywhere between 1000 and 1200 pages (depending on your copy) and it never gets boring. It is never a slog. And nothing is wasted. This shows me how skilled this man is.

I’ve tried to stay away from too many specifics in my review; the book needs to be read and experienced, and “the less you know, the better” certainly applies here. However, I need to mention how Follett handles one of the major events of the book—The Black Death. I’m writing this in 2021, nearly 15 years after this book was written, and there are aspects of this book that are shockingly relevant. I’m not just talking about pandemic disease; this is something that has been written about a lot by a variety of authors across genres. Follett decides to make medical “science” of the time a major focus, and it brings up questions of where diseases come from, how they spread, and how they’re best treated. Monks were the main “doctors” of the time, as they could read Latin and were trained in the teachings of the Romans - physicians like Galen, who wrote about balancing the humours to treat disease. If you know anything about this, you know how terrifyingly ineffective it is, as the basic idea they based their entire treatment regimens on was just plain wrong.

This is the school of bleeding a sick patient, placing rotten meat over wounds to “encourage the body to bring forth pus”, and of course, the fundamental medieval belief that disease was ultimately a punishment from God. That is not to say however, that there were not people at the time who were doing remarkable things to further medical care; there certainly were, and Follett gives us a front seat view of this. Yes, the idea of masking to slow the spread of disease is covered (a debate that we know all-too-well in 2021), as well as separating the infectious from the injured, keeping clean hands and cleaning wounds, the idea that disease is spread through the air, and much much more. The battle between the more progressive medical workers of the time and their struggle against and rejection of the old ways and the humour theory of disease is an aspect of this novel that I found absolutely fascinating. And I think you will too. Yes, you.

The freakshow-esque and hysterical nature that began to overtake once normal people and even whole towns as the Black Death went on and on, and continues to get worse and worse is covered as well. Humans react to this large-scale death in all kinds of ways. This was just as true in the 14th century as any other time; some people gave into their most carnal desires and had parties and orgies. Some lost their minds with fear. Some became fanatically religious, and took to the streets, marching across England in large groups whipping themselves, recreating the Passion of Christ on their own bodies, carrying crosses and scourging their backs with sharp whips (the flagellants), and some tried to hold the fabric of their fast-collapsing societies together. It’s all here.

Ok, it’s time for me to stick a cork in it. There are so many more things to say; I have barely even begun to scratch the surface on why this book is such a colossal achievement. The same is true for Pillars of the Earth, and I consider these books equals. Follett once again combines small, dramatic human stories with big picture events, and shows us how we all fit into the history of human civilization, then and now. Do yourself a favor, and read the Kingsbridge series.

5/5

This is a long....very long book. At times it was difficult to get motivated to keep going with it. I have really enjoyed Ken Follett's books in the past, but the endless scheming, plotting and machinations of the characters became tiring. I'm fine with all the sex and hypocrisy of the church. The difficulty I had was that the characters are drawn with very large black and white brush strokes. The protagonists are just way too good and the antagonists are just so evil. There's no grey anywhere and that makes them more contrived and less believable. You definitely feel the deliberate manipulation in the plotting as the characters overcome one adversity after another. I liked the historical setting and appreciate Follett's ability to construct such an elaborate story line. But, in the end it felt like I invested a lot of time in something that was not as compelling as I would of liked.

En esta segunda parte de los pilares de la tierra, Ken Follet nos muestra como Kingsbridge ,160 años despues, ha crecido hasta convertirse en una ciudad de comerciantes.

Me gusta que los personajes, tengan desarrollos diferentes, y que vayan creciendo a lo largo de la historia.por ejemplo en Caris encontramos a una mujer que desde chica sabe lo que quiere, pero no sabe como conseguirlo y también como el destino la va llevando por caminos inesperados; Me gusta el personaje de Ralph como el malo de la historia, porque está bien sustentado y a lo largo de las 1179 páginas se mantiene fiel a su naturaleza y forma de pensar.

Sin spoilear solo quiero decir que no me gusta el desarrollo de Philemón ni el cierre que da a la historia con Lola, esa es la razón que para mí esta sea una historia de 4 estrellas.

Second Ken Follett, second Ken Follett audiobook, second Ken Follett audiobook listened to in car, first time I have ever wished to be caught in a really humungous traffic jam.

This was an enthralling sort of sequel to the n  The Pillars of the Earthn. I say sort of because it is set some 200 years after the end of that wondrous story. Just as the previous novel looked at the building of the Cathedral and the growth of the fictional city of Kingsbridge* through the disastrous 19 year reign of King Stephen and beyond, this novel covers the forty years or so of the middle part of the 14th Century embracing most especially the horrendous catastrophe of the Bubonic Plague's arrival in Europe in which perhaps a third or more of Europe died a horrible death.

The story centres around the lives of four young children who witness the killing of two men at arms who themselves had come to kill the young knight who turned the tables on them. From those deaths unfurl the long, long journey of the story which cleverly comes full circle right at the end of this huge work. A mysterious letter, buried by this young man, is pivotal to the story and, though it does not reappear fully until the end, punctuates the plot's every twist and turn like a hinted shadow or a glimpsed figure of menace.

The four children grow from pre-adolescent exploring and friendship to middle age and all the accrued experiences. Caris, a young rich girl who is beautiful as well as wealthy but who is a natural leader, strikingly independant in thought, vision and action and is, if I may be so bold, a tad anachronistic. This does seem to be a theme for Follett. Certainly in the two novels which I have read and loved, the main female character is brilliant and strong and intelligent and insightful and therefore, whether people like it or not, not a very accurate outline of how a woman would have been able to be in the 14th Century. We might 100% agree with everything she says and does, or at least a good deal of it, but she speaks and reacts and behaves as a woman might well speak and react and behave in 2012 but most certainly not how she would in 1312. She is a great character but not of her time.

Then we have Merthin, the great love of her life. Of lower gentry fallen on hard times. Should be of rich stock but incompetence by his father results in a lower standing. He becomes an Architect and Trailblazer and courageous man of honour and decency. Another visionary.

His brother, Ralph, an unbelievably squalid shit. Cruel and vengeful and vicious and murderous and irredeemably awful and then we have Gwenda. She is the token peasant not quite the tart with the heart but every soap opera has to have the poor girl whose role is to be the best friend of the rich girl thus enabling aforesaid rich girl to take on another mantel, that of democratic liberal. This is to belittle Gwenda really as she is a brilliantly drawn and brave character and her struggles serve to mark momentous moments in the story and the ebb and flow of her life is one which really holds the reader's sympathy.

Re-reading this it might sound as if i did not like the book. I did. It is excellent. A fantastically exciting story, enormously expansive in its canvas and has enough willthey/won't they moments and gasp-i-can't-believe-he/she/they/said/did/achieved that opportunities for plot development that you are swept along. However this volume, more than the first one I think, is a total Middle Ages Soap opera. I am not sneering at that; it is ridiculously addictive, hence my desire for a big traffic jam but this time the historical awkwardness jarred more. The language used, the opinions expressed...always by Caris and Merthin and sometimes by others of their allies....were not believable for people of the 14th century. Their middle class sensitivities and liberal attitudes are wonderful for middle class and liberal people living and working and falling in love in the 21st Century but though Caris may well have struggled with all sorts of things I felt she was struggling as would a 21st century women transferred by magic back to the 14th century. Her struggles were of a woman going to bed in 2012 Surrey and waking up in 1348, the Bobby Ewing shower scene in reverse.

Follett again keeps 'plates' spinning brilliantly and draws characters with sharp lines so that you do not need to think much but know exactly who you are to boo and who you are to cheer. There was an oddly convenient use of the Black Death where his scythe seemed always to cut down the right people to ease the plot along and enable the main characters to progress. Only one central character died of it and indeed that was massively convenient and came at just the right time. Once again i am not criticizing for the sake of it but it does reinforce the idea of Soap Opera. In Emmerdale or 'Corrie' we will have a plane crash or a train pile up. In the pre-machine, pre-Industrial age of Medieaval Kingsbridge we will use the mightily convenient pandemic making sure only minor characters or certainly those whose usefulness to the plot is past or maybe they want to move on to do a season in Pantomime at Blackpool for the Christmas season. Anyway they will be the ones who 'buy it'.

Things i found briliant were the ways Follett easily explains the development of social structures and the growth of industry and the discovery of different ways of weaving or dyeing or construction. I felt I was learning as i read without even realizing it. The development of surnames and titles and the beginnings of the loosening of the serf structure was fascinating. The political and ecclesiastical battles were cleverly hinted at. The hopelessness of the poor before the tyranny of the powerful was well expressed and the stagnating grip of the status quo was well illustrated. I felt myself groan with frustration along with Caris and Merthin even as I knew this was another anachronism. By this stage i didn't care. That is the power of Mr Follett, I recognize that he is manipulating and twisting reality to suit his story and characters but he did it so well that i was totally Team Caris.

Each time Ralph did something monstrous, each time Godwin was an underhand shite, every time Philemon...who obviously smelt, Follett did not spell this out but i knew this had to be......just breathed I let all these occasions collect in my memory knowing they would surely all be avenged in some way shape or form. Well, all i will say is......I was not massively disappointed....Follett does a good plate of comeuppance and here he parts company with Soap opera cos he, quite evidently, believes in happy endings.


*though I would point out that for threee years I lived just 10 miles from the small town called Kingsbridge which nestles in the beautiful area of the South Hams in Devon

Πρόκειται για ένα εξαιρετικό βιβλίο όπου η ιστορια μπλέκεται με την πλοκή με τρόπο αριστοτεχνικό.Ούτε μια στιγμή δεν έπιασα τον εαυτό μου να βαριέται σε όλες τις 1237 σελίδες(τόσες είχε αγγλική έκδοση της panmachimilan).
Όσον αφορά την πλοκή ο FOLLET αξιοποιεί τέλεια τα ιστορικά δεδομένα όπως η πανούκλα και ο εκατονταετης πόλεμος για να προωθήσει την πλοκή του με ρεαλιστικό τρόπο.Μάλιστα εξεπλάγην οταν έμαθα πως Ι συγκεκριμένος συγγραφέας δεν είχε και πολύ σχέση με την ιστορια πριν γράψει το "The pillars of the earth".Ωστόσο,ερεύνησε σε βάθος το ιστορικό πλαίσιο με αποτέλεσμα και τα δύο βιβλία να θεωρούνται πλέον κλασσικά,όσον αφορά το ιστορικό μυθιστόρημα.
Οι χαρακτήρες ήταν επίσης πολύ καλα μελετημενοι.Λάτρεψα τον Merthin που είχε όραμα και αποφασιστικότητα σε συνδυασμό με την καλοσύνη.(SPOILERS!!!).Μίσησα αφάνταστα τον Godwyn που αναβλύζει σχετη κακία.Ήταν πιστεύω το τέλειο πορτραίτο μιας σημαντικής μερίδας κληρικών του Μεσαίωνα που δεν δίσταζε να πατήσει επί πτωμάτων αν ήταν να ανέβει βαθμίδα στην κοινωνική ιεραρχία.Ο χαρακτήρας ρου ήταν εξαιρετικά ενδιαφέρον.Ο Ralph ήταν το αντίστοιχο τουWilliam(Pillars of the Earth) αν και ήταν λιγάκι πιο συμπαθής απ τον τελευταίο.Η Gwenda αντιπροσώπευε την τάξη των χωρικών του Μεσαίωνα και των δουλοπάροικων που προσπαθούσαν να επιβιώσουν υπό τη σκιά το φεουδαρχία τους.Ο χαρακτήρας που δεν συμπάθησα με τίποτα ήταν η Caris,ο τόσος εγωισμός της ήταν αχριαστος κατ' εμέ.Ο Merthin θα είχε ταιριάξει πολύ καλυτερα με τη Lady Philippa.
Αξίζει να διαβαστεί από όλους αυτό το βιβλίο,καθώς ειναι ο τύπος της επικής ιστορίας που θυμίζει κλασσικά αριστουργήματα όπως οι Άθλιοι η Η ιστορια δύο πόλεων,χωρίς τις εκτεταμένες ιστορικές και φιλοσοφικες αναφορές που μπορεί κάποιους να τους κουράζουν(εμένα πάντως μου αρέσουν και αυτές πολύ).

Kingsbridge 1327. Un caballero vence a varios soldados en combate y entierra un documento antes de ingresar en el monasterio de Kingsbridge para convertirse en monje.

Cuatro jóvenes son testigos de los hechos y sus vidas quedarán entrelazadas en el futuro. Caris, la hija de un mercader de lana, luchará por ser doctora (profesión vetada a las mujeres) y no dudará en enfrentarse a la iglesia con tal de defender sus ideales. Merthin se convierte en el mejor arquitecto de Kingsbridge, pero ante la imposibilidad de casarse con Caris, termina emigrando a Italia. Ralph accederá al poder tras sus méritos en la guerra contra Francia, convirtiéndose en una persona violenta y vengativa. Por su parte, Gwenda, hija de un ladrón, luchará por el hombre al que ama pero su vida en el campo no será nada fácil.

Ken Follet narra una fascinante historia en la que la construcción de un puente, la guerra con Francia, la llegada de la peste, la construcción de un hospital para enfermos,... atrapa al lector desde el principio y le sumerge de lleno en una de las etapas más convulsas de la época medieval.

✔️ Puntos fuertes: la ambientación, las descripciones, las intrigas, los personajes y su evolución, la prosa del autor.

❤ Te gustará si: buscas una novela histórica y que enganche, o te gusta la narrativa del autor.

I have finally finished this 1000 page novel and I am more than ready to move on.
If you have recently read Pillars of the Earth, and liked it, I would strongly recommend you take some time before diving into this one, because it's a long haul. It is very much the same pacing, and a similar setting as its predecessor, so unless you're a very fast reader (I'm not), 2000+ pages of 1100-1369AD England may wear very thin for you.

I waited about ten years, and so was very ready to revisit the town of
Kingsbridge.
Like Pillars of the Earth, World Without End centers on a cast of characters and their lives set against the rule of the Church, Earls and knights.
Unlike Pillars, the cast seems smaller than I remembered...the story follows two pairs of siblings, and their lives over thirty years or so, so this was great. Follett had less characters to spread out, and characterization was very nicely fleshed out.

Although this novel for some reason took me a month to read (I read it on my Kindle, but I seem to remember looking at the book a while back and noticed it was 1000 pages of very small print. I guess that's why), in no way did the story drag. This is Follett's talent. He can sure draw out a story and make you care about these people. I felt their joy, I was outraged at the injustices they were forced to endure, and I was hopeful of things to turn out for the best for everyone and the town, and for the evil ones to get what was coming to them.
Add in a dash of engineering lessons in building bridges and other structures and this makes for a fantastic read.
The only issue I had was that for the last 80 pages or so it seemed to me that Follett was stalling to end it. Clearly he was vested in these characters.
But it could very well be that after a month it was more a case of me getting antsy to move on to something else.
When I started writing this review, I was set on rating it a solid 4. But, I am very impressed with his ability to maintain the fast pace of story for a thousand pages.
So, really 4 and a bit, but I think I'll round up to 5 stars.

n  Watch my video review by clicking here.n

Every bit as good as Pillars of the Earth, albeit a very similar pacing that becomes a bit predictable.

Ken Follett is a clever man. Having written the bestseller The Pillars of the Earth, he then wrote an even longer sequel called World Without End which is strikingly similar in tone, plot, and characters. But he waited nearly twenty years to do it. Instead of saying, "Ken Follett is a one-trick pony," people said, "Oh, hooray! I remember that I really liked that book."

World Without End actually takes place several hundred years after The Pillars of the Earth but since we're dealing with the Middle Ages, you'd hardly know it. The world is much the same as it was when the cathedral of the fictional town of Kingsbridge was built, and most of the inhabitants do the same jobs--there are nuns, monks, a powerful prior, wool merchants, an alderman, serfs, and so forth. They still fight over essentially the same issues and privileges.

Where the first book dealt with the tension between secular and ecclesiastical authority, this one sets up a power struggle between inventive merchants and peasants, on one hand, and conservative priests and nobles, on the other. The modern reader deeply feels the frustration of men and women who want to grow cash crops, move to towns that offer higher wages, open hospitals, and build bridges. This book would make anyone a capitalist.

The characters are, to be honest, somewhat interchangeable with the figures from the first book: a clever female merchant, a steady and reliable builder, and a devious clergyman. But the book creates new intrigues between them, and Follett is, like his protagonist, a good architect. He builds up layers of conflict and mystery for the first two-thirds of the book, and then meticulously resolves them, in roughly the reverse order, as the book winds gracefully to a close.

This is certainly not a literary book, but it's well-constructed; it's not erudite, but shows an understanding of history. Like its predecessor, it's just a satisfying read.

[4.5]

Mi ha rapito per 1400 pagine.
Non ho altro da aggiungere.