World Without End by Ken Follett

So last year I waxed on and on about how much I loved Pillars of the Earth. And I was so excited that there were sequels!  And then it took me almost two years to read one of those sequels.  But, don't worry, my friends, World Without End was totally worth the wait. 150 years after the events of the first novel, we're back in Kingsbridge and this time! This time! It's not about building a church! It's about building a bridge, a hospital, and fighting the plague!

Again, if you'd said to me, hey, NGS, do you want to read a book about the Black Death?  I would have politely told you no. But if said, hey, do want to read a soap opera-like retelling of how war and illness and the politics of the Church impacted a small village in the 1300s?  I might still have said no, but I would have had to think harder about it.

And I think that soap opera nature of these novels is what really works for me. It tells us about the day to day living of ordinary men and women. Sure, there are occasional jaunts to castles and storylines about who gets to be next the next earl (as an American, I say *yawn*), but we spend a lot of time with peasants and merchants and really see that transition from a feudal society to a capitalistic one.

Yes, there's still rape, and a lot of it, but I feel like Follett allows a lot of that to happen off page, so I don't feel repulsed reading it.  There are also some (occasional) consequences for those rapes.  Yes, I still feel like the dialogue is a bit anachronistic and modern, but I think people are people and the concerns of people living in the 1300s were probably similar enough to modern day concerns that I can let that slide. Yes, I wish that our main female protagonist, Caris, was not a weak-spined snake, but if I'm being charitable, I would call her a "complex character."

What I'm saying is that I understand that there are criticisms of this novel. I don't care. I love it.  I loved every 1014 pages. I loved every dumb paragraph about working in the fields. I loved the endless descriptions of parts of the church, architectural feats, and how to make a bridge stand the test of time.

Don't shame me. Ken Follett is my spirit animal. (I wrote this knowing nothing about Follett's personal life. A quick internet shows he seems like a good dude. Thank heavens.)