WHICH IS SEXIER, PILLARS OR WORLD WITHOUT END?

books:

	• The Pillars of the Earth (Deluxe Edition) (Oprah's Book Club) Ken Follett NAL Trade, 2007 - 973 pages average customer review:based on 1311 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

WHICH IS SEXIER, PILLARS OR WORLD WITHOUT END?

ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS!!! MUST READ, ESPECIALLY IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN THAT TIME PERIOD AND ARE A FAN OF CATHEDRAL ARCHITECTURE. PLUS SO MUCH HOT AND STEAMY ROMANCE!

Have patience, it's worth it

I received this book as a gift, and I was not terribly impressed with it at first. With some encouragement from the gift-giver, I continued on. The story was lovely, and it was worth the almost 1,000 pages of effort. It is an informed and well-written story with some very interesting characters. There are some great morality points, too. You have your standard bibilical allusion winding through the novel. Follet was careful, though, to make it subtle, and I appreciated that. It would have been too easy to tell a Sunday school Bible lesson while talking about the building of a cathedral.
Having read the book, I am glad that I persevered, but I had some serious problems with this book, too. First, there are some really graphic scenes of sex and violence that just were not necessary. Of course, this book is about a period of time in 12th Century England called "the Anarchy," which saw its fair share of graphic scenes. I was very disturbed by the scenes, though, and I wish the author had a more graceful way of writing them. I think Follett went a little overboard with the architectural descriptions, too. I believe he probably was greatly inspired by the cathedrals he saw while doing research for the novel and wanted to share it with his readers. That is obvious with in the verbosity of his descriptions. I couldn't visualize what he was describing, though, so I was lost in much of the master builder's musings over his designs. Overall, the characters were good. It seems, though, that Follett spent a great deal of time thinking about his heroes and left the rest to develop themselves. The women in the novel are especially odd to me. They are your basic "strong women" as imagined by a male writer. I have never met a woman like Follett describes. I doubt he has either, but it seems like he wants to. The evil characters are also too much. One example is the man who can't get aroused unless he is with a child and only if he hurts her. It is just too easy to hate a character like that. Once again, I wish there had been more grace.
Having said that, I think there are some great strengths to the book, too. Although the characters are at times too much to be believed, I loved the fact that we were able to watch them grow, learn, and age. We watch their lives over the course of almost 40 years, and we experience with them all the great events of their lives. Follett did a good job with that. In fact, I think he wrote the characters better as they aged. I also loved the twisting and turning the story takes. So as not to give anything away, I will only say that the characters all experience some ups and downs in their lives. Just when you think Follett has said all he could say, a new story begins. Still, he connects them seamlessly. My favorite part of the story is the ending. I sometimes get very angry with authors of long books who write anticlimactic endings. This is not one of those.
If you are willing to give this book some time and effort, it is really an enjoyable read and an interesting look at possibly the most turbulent time in English history.

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Review: Pillars of the Earth

This book was a true pleasure to read. And I enjoyed reading it on my Kindle as well. I am now reading Ken Follet's sequal to this book, which takes place several hundred years later. I give it 5 stars.

reviews: 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, page 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20

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