The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

If you had asked me how I would feel about reading a 983-page epic about the building of a cathedral in England in the 1100s, I would probably have reacted in a decidedly negative fashion.  It just doesn't sound like something that I would be excited about - historical fiction, religious links, and the Middle Ages are not NGS-like topics. 

But.

This was wonderful. It was quite a page turner. For the week or so that I was reading, I was keeping Dr. BB abreast of all the news on the building of the cathedral (a fire! cracks in the clerestory! workers' strike!) and he had taken to looking at the cat (THE CAT) to roll his eyes about how much he did not care about this fictional church. 

Now, I get that there are nit pickers out there who are fond of pointing out some negatives about this novel. There are several graphic rape scenes, the use of modern vernacular is occasionally enough to take you out of the setting, and for someone who doesn't know a lot about the dynamics of the church and the king in the Dark Ages, this gets into the weeds a bit.  There is a fair amount of cursing if that's something you don't like. I don't think the swearing or rape scenes are gratuitous, but there are plenty of people who disagree with me. I grant that these are all fair criticisms.

I don't care. This book has it all.  There's war, intrigue, love, plot, and relatively strong writing. I was invested from page ten and it just kept getting better. The author makes sure to tie up loose ends in fun, creative ways (although there was one glaring inconsistency that I'm sad about) and I was desperately trying to gobble up just a few more pages every minute I could.  People live and die here and there are real consequences for mistakes, but mistakes are made by both the good guys and the bad guys. There may be historical inaccuracies about clothing/language/horses/facts of royal lineage, but it's historical fiction and I think it would honestly be a lot less interesting if the novel stuck strictly to verifiable facts.

The best part? I just learned that there are TWO more books associated with this, sequels set 150 years in the future, so I don't have to let go of this world just yet.  I hope the cathedral is all right!