For some time now I've been intending to treat myself to reading Ken Follett's World Without End, the central novel in the trilogy focused on the cathedral at Kingsbridge which began with his brilliant The Pillars of the Earth. It was a little earlier than this time last year that I read the final novel, A Column of Fire, ending in the reign of James I. That was a good read, though lacking something of the almost mythic power of Pillars, and I deliberately tried to immediately 'forget' all the references to the story of the town as it developed in the fourteenth century knowing that one day I'd immerse myself in those events.
Anyway, I picked up a handsome paperback edition of the 'middle' novel from the library the other week and embarked on my reading yesterday. I'm now around 150 pages in and it's a blast! Follett is good at many things and offers many rewards, but above all it's his command of 'events' that impresses. He knows how the world works and used to work and convinces even the most supremely impractical reader (i.e., myself) that they too can understand the ways things get done and got done, and have some grasp of the people that did them.
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