So. I feel like I should either write a very long note about Ken Follett’s World without End, to match how incredibly hefty the book is, or I should write a one-line note to contrast it. Alas, I will do neither.
The book is far too heavy. If one of the priests had magic powers, it would be a trilogy. Seriously. Much too much book. I know part of the point of the book is its sprawl, although it covers only a few decades and despite a few scenes in France and Italy and in London and some other port town, it mostly confines itself to the interactions of a handful of people in one area of England. Those people come back into contact with each other again and again in different ways, as each takes on different roles in the community. Sadly, it all feels a bit artificial: one character is a single woman in a bourgeois family, then a businesswoman, then an accused heretic, a nun, a physician, an Abbess, and then mayor of a medium sized town. Another is a poor landless descendant of minor nobility, then a squire, then a soldier, a knight, a junior officer in a war, lord of a minor manor, a substantial lord, and then Earl. That’s a fairly logical progression, and it happens with lots of incident (sex and violence, usually both together), but it feels artificial, as if the promotions are imposed so that we can learn something new about the economy of the fourteenth century.
On the other hand, we do learn an awful lot about the economy and politics of the fourteenth century. Mr. Follett does it very well, binding the temporary goals of his characters to the limitations of their political and economic situation. Often those limitations overwhelm his characters, which is depressing but realistic. On the other hand, often his characters unrealistically break through those limitations, which is uplifting and fun. Save the town from the plague! Build the highest tower in England! Invent a new loom and dying process! Write a bestselling healthcare book! Grow valuable herbs in your spare time and make money from home!
Somehow, it all feels more forced than the last one. Also, where in the last one, Mr. Follett really enjoyed getting into the details of artistic movements and so on, the degenerate fourteenth century stuff in this one quite rightly gets short shrift. Our artisan decides to carve something different on a door, and does, and it pisses off the old guard, but there’s no real sense of it being part of a movement. He goes to Florence and becomes a wealthy architect and comes back all continental and educated, but we don’t get lovingly detailed description of what he learns while he’s away, because, frankly, who cares? It’s all downhill after the pointy arch anyway.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.
If Mr. Follett had actually used the pointed arch, the book might have held up under its own damn weight. In this book, he clearly needed snrk buttresses.