The Evening and the Morning (Kingsbridge #0) by Ken Follett

The Pillars of the Earth
World without End
A Column of Fire

The Evening and the Morning is a prequel to Follett's original Kingsbridge trilogy. I think we all know that for a period of time in 2018, I was obsessed with The Pillars of the Earth, so let's dive in to the world of Kingsbridge once more.

As a reminder, the first book in this series was all about building a church in the hamlet of Kingsbridge in the 1100s, the second was about the Black Death in the same geographic location in the 1300s, and the third was about nonsense having to do with royalty in the 1500s. The first two books focused almost exclusively on Kingsbridge and I loved the day-to-day minutiae of what people wore, ate, and worked. (Let's forget the third book exists because I didn't love it the way I loved the first two books.) Follett manages to weave historical facts into a soap opera narrative about who's sleeping with the neighbor, who's stealing from the king, and what even is that monk doing. 

This book was a fine return to form. Set in the decade from 996 to 1007 in what was then known as Dreng's Ferry but later became Kingsbridge, this book focuses on the daily lives of people who are being attacked by both the Welsh and the Vikings while under the rule of a weak king, so there is chaos, vigilante justice, and plenty of gossip about who is not sleeping in their own beds at night.

There are several parallel storylines at play here. We have a shipbuilder who has fled from his home after a Viking raid, a monk who just wants to read books, and a foreign noble-born woman who married for love only to find out far too late that she made a mistake. It's typical in a Follett book in that he doesn't shy away from the harsh realities of this time period and the kind of life people might have - descriptions of slavery, beatings, rapes, and extrajudicial punishment are not rare in this book, so if that's a dealbreaker for you, steer clear. However, I don't feel like Follett is using these scenes in a gratuitous way, and I admire him in some ways for keeping to the realities of what might have happened to people in the time period.

Sure, it's a tiny bit campy. Could the evil stepmother be more evil? Could the corrupt priest be any more corrupt? But Follett is a magical writer who makes 900 pages seem like a stroll through a very lovely forest.  If you liked other Kingsbridge books, you'll like this one, too!  4.5/5 stars

Lines of note:

"Guilllaume is not diseased, or mad, or depraved."

"He sounds like every girl's dream." (page 78)

One of the characters was very sassy and nearly every time she spoke, I chuckled.

"Don't even say that. There's no place for a single noblewoman. She's no use, but she still requires gowns and jewels and horses and servants, and her father gets tired of paying out and getting nothing back. What's more, the married women hate her, because they think she wants to steal their husbands." (page 151)

This reminded me of Daisy in Scandal in Spring by Lisa Kleypas. When her father accused her of being a parasite, Daisy didn't have much of a comeback. It must have been quite challenging indeed to be an unmarried woman of noble birth.

Aldred was in love with Edgar, and Edgar knew it. Aldred's love was hopeless, for Edgar would never reciprocate. He would never fall in love with Aldred.

Edgar felt the same way about Ragna. He was in love with her, and it would never come to anything. She would never fall in love with him. There was no hope. (page 640)

This is the glory of Follett books. Imagine all the unrequited love!

Things I looked up:

armarius (page 77) - the librarian in a medieval monastery who kept, repaired, and catalogued its manuscripts and books

murrain (page 866) - an infectious disease, especially babesiosis, affecting cattle or other animals