World Without End by Ken Follett Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of World Without End
Book Review: Ken Follett has done it again!
Summary: 5 Stars
A sequel of sorts to The Pillars of The Earth takes place two hundred years later. The descendents of some of the original characters are present and fun to find. The story reads the same. Like you can't put it down even though it is a lot of pages. All the better, because it makes it last! I enjoyed the descriptions of the food thay ate, the clothes they wore, living conditions etc, etc.
Now I am waiting for another sequel. There is a lot of English history to write about. Mr. Follett could really make it interesting.
Book Review: Excellent Book Just Like The First One
Summary: 4 Stars
I truly enjoyed this book! If you like historical fiction this is a perfect book for you.Book Review: Hugely disappointing
Summary: 1 Stars
Last summer, I read Pillars of the Earth, and really enjoyed it. World Without End was a dismal "sequel", full of undeveloped characters oozing modern angst. As Ken Follet himself has admitted, the only cheerfully celibate character he has ever created is Prior Phillip, one of the main characters in Pillars of the Earth. The book is wonderful in how it chronicles the building of a cathedral, and the medieval mindset receives a measure of respect. It has quite a bit of sex in it, but the scenes are more linked to the human condition and don't have the smutty feel that the sex scenes in World Without End have.
I recently finished World Without End. I should have just gone directly to the acknowledgment page, and, upon seeing the name of Erica Jong, saved myself hours of wasted time. World Without End is full of modern attitudes about many things, not just sex. The time period is the high middle ages, the location England, but the feeling this book evokes is that of the Borgia popes and decadent Renaissance Italy as chronicled by, say, a Dan Brown. Religion is blamed for every evil imaginable. Forget the ample historical documentation of the Church as being the driving force behind cathedrals, universities and hospitals, forget about the many scientists, scholars and humanitarians affiliated with the Church throughout the milennia -- all you will be presented with in World Without End is narrowness, greed, illicit sex, murder, betrayal, hypocrisy, sexism and stupidity. Anything good that comes of religious life is due, not to the tenets of Christianity and the devotion of the followers of Christ, but to the inner strength of and resistance to Church teachings by the sympathetic characters. One of the most ridiculous situations is the lead female character seeking an herbal abortion from a wise woman healer (another sympathetic character) and then staggering off to the hospital run by the priory in order to abort and get cleaned up. And no, she was not raped or subjected to incest. You will find in this book that women who are raped and conceive as a result bring forth children who are a bad. Revenge is the vehicle with which all loose ends are managed. This book is utterly devoid of the action of grace on any character in the entire tome.
I did read the entire book. No one put a gun to my head, either.
Book Review: Flow Chart of Characters
Summary: 4 Stars
The novel does not match the intensity and compelling storyline of PotE, but is still a damn good summer read. I had to make a chart of characters as I went along, until I finally became familiar with them. There is a complete chart on Follett's website: http://www.ken-follett.com/wwe/characters.html I recommend printing this and using it as a bookmark. It will facilitate reading. Enjoy.Book Review: Medieval Soap Opera
Summary: 4 Stars
This book made a great summer read! I found myself picking it up every chance I got because I couldn't wait to find out what would happen next. There are many stories and characters (100's) intricately woven together. I imagine that if soap operas had existed in the middle ages, the storylines would have been similar. However, if you are looking for deep reading, World is not it. Despite the book's long length, this is very light, easy reading. For me, the most interesting parts of the book were the ones dealing with the plague and how it changed medieval society. One thing that sets this book apart from other historical novels I've read is that it deals with everyday people rather than royalty and the nobility. The main characters are Merthin and Ralph, brothers whose father is a former knight now reduced to poverty, Gwenda, a girl born into utter poverty who manages to survive anyway, and Caris, the daughter of a wealthy merchant.
Many readers have criticized the amount of "gratuitous" sex in the book. There are, at times, a good bit, but no more than one finds on T.V. these days. Also, I would hardly call the sex scenes explicit, but so badly written that they are almost comical. They seem to have been written from a adolescent male's point of view. Many other criticisms were from people who did not even finish the book. I don't think it is fair to write a crtical review of a book you did not bother to finish. If they had hung in there, they would have found that there as an explanation for everything that happened.
While I enjoyed this book a great deal, I gave it 4 stars because I felt that it was poorly edited. There was too much repetition in the book. For example, Philemon and Godwyn were described as being "obsequious" at least ten times making me wonder why someone didn't pick up a thesaurus. One also gets tired of reading about how plump Madge Webber is, that Gwenda looks like a rodent and other repititious physical descriptions of the many characters.
One other complaint I have is that the Catholic Church is portrayed as being corrupt. While there was quite a bit of corruption in the church at that time, they were not all bad and I wish there had been a few pious church leaders portrayed in the book to balance out the bad leaders.
If you are looking for a light read that will keep you hooked I think you will enjoy this book. I hope Mr. Follett will write another sequel. I would love to find out how Kingsbridge Priory survives Henry VIII and the Protestant Reformation.