Ken Follett's latest blockbuster

 I have just finished reading the fourth of Ken Follett's Kingsbridge series. Although Follett has written over twenty other novels, including Eye of the Needle, which became an International Bestseller (which book nowadays doesn't have that boast on its front cover?), he is probably best known for The Pillars of the Earth, which burst on the scene as long ago as 1989. I didn't read it until many years later, when I picked it up for £4 in Michael's Moon's wonderful book emporium in Whitehaven. I thought it was a bargain then and I feel I still do.

First edition - Macmillan 1989

I seem to remember I bought the book because I was in a frenzy of collecting novels on The Anarchy.

The blurb on the front flyleaf of the dust wrapper supported my purchase. The book takes the reader back to a turbulent era of intrigue and treachery - a time of civil war, famine, religious strife, and battles over royal succession. The cast of characters included Tom, the master builder; Aliena, the noblewoman; Philip, the prior of Kingsbridge; Jack, the artist in stone; and Ellen, the woman from the forest. As a spoiler, I would like to state here that I agree with some of the Amazon reviewers about the latest in the series - give or take, the cast is very, almost too, similar.

                      First edition - Macmillan 2007        First edition - Macmillan 2017

Eighteen years later, Follett followed up his bestseller with another Kingsbridge story - World Without End - this time set in 1327. It is a world dominated by regicide, war with the French, the Black Death and, as always with Follett, the cruelties of religion and churchmen. As one reviewer, when the book came out, wittily wrote: Caris, the principal female character, is a freethinker, proto-Protestant, pioneering medical mind, fab shag, and creator of the three-field system. And surely a candidate for the stake, if a real historical perspective came into play. 

I don't remember as much about the third book, A Column of Fire, which runs from the very end of Mary Tudor's reign into that of James I. Certainly good old 'hatred' is to the fore again, as are the ancient stones of Kingsbridge Cathedral. Tolerance and compromise wage battle against the tyrants who would impose their ideas on everyone else - no matter the cost. Are we in 1558 or in 2020? 

First edition - Macmillan 2020

   

 I once called a friend's book a 'good doorstop' and immediately felt ashamed of myself. 'Blockbuster' or 'heavyweight' is much politer. Follett's large cast of characters and extended time-scale means that his stories will not come in quickly. Pillars of the Earth was 806 pages;, World Without End seemed to result in a Book Without End, weighing in at 1111 pages; A Column of Fire was a mere 746 pages; whilst his latest beats Pillars with 817 pages. I read one reviewer who said they had read the latter in one sitting - don't they sleep or eat?

The negatives about these books are easy to quantify. They are too long; judicious pruning would have helped greatly. The main characters are always irredeemably bad or awfully good. The dialogue too often tips into modern slang/anachronistic wordplay or cod-medieval. The sex scenes are too often gratuitous and laboured (Follett seems to have a fixation about pubic hair). And yet, I quite enjoyed them. Follett clearly does his research and, apart from the above comments, he seems at ease in the period he is writing about.

My main gripe about this Prequel (there is still a gap of 129 years between the end of the The Evening and the start of The Pillars) is that at nearly every opportunity the 'bad' win. There are 817 pages. Not until page 748 do we read that one of the minor baddies, the spy-servant Agnes, has died - of 'Whore's Leprosy'; on page 764, the ale-house keeper/ferry owner baddie Dreng dies of a heart attack (trying to hit his slave girl a second time with a shovel); on page 782 Wigelm, the youngest of the three baddie brothers is killed by the long-suffering Ragna; then, the baddie-in-chief, Bishop Wynstan, the most evil of the brothers (riddled with the same 'Whore's Palsy' and having defecated in his cathedral in front of the King and other nobility on page 806) is finally stripped of his bishopric and sent to the Leper's Island to be looked after by a lesbian-inclined Mother Agatha; his side-kick Archdeacon Degbert ends up as a penniless village priest.

The goodies get their positive come-uppance only at the very end, too. Sheriff Den becomes Shiring's ealdorman; prior Aldred - who has a hankering for his own sex - becomes Bishop of King's Bridge (for most of the book named Deng's Ferry); the hero (yet another builder) Edgar returns from France  (on page 810) to unite with the long-suffering Lady Ragna - on the penultimate page - having just become Edgar of Lordsborough, thanks to her. It all happens too quickly - for both bad and good. 

It was not just the battle, Ragna reflected. Garulf's family had defied the king's rule again and again for a decade, disobeying orders and refusing to pay fines. It had seemed that they would get away with it indefinitely, but now at last their insurrection had come to an end. There was justice, after all. A pity it took such a long time coming. (my highlighting). 

One could say the same about Follett's book, as this is on pages 802-803.