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World Without End Reviews

Customer Rating:
Summary: A MAJOR DISAPPOINTMENT
Comment: I read "Pillars of the Earth" during the Summer 1991; its plot and characters bled into my life that summer. I carried them around no matter where I went. I so LOVED this novel. When "World Without End" came out, I was delighted, but decided to wait for the paperback (reading a hardbound book that size in bed is challenging). Anyway, as I nestled into bed during the Christmas holidays, I began the novel with high expectations.

Alas, what a disappointment. The writing is humdrum and poor. The author had to keep explaining the characters' motives and the responses to them. Does he consider his readers to be totally stupid? His sentence structure was so very boring. The plot was like a TV miniseries: perhaps enticing, but lacking depth. Godwyn became more shallow as he became more evil. Ralph was a cardboard, one-dimensional character.

I could go on and on about my complaints. Suffice it to say: Shame on this author. I think that Follett was "stuffing the novel" to make his deadline and collect his money. He left this reader utterly unimpressed.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: great book, didnt want it to end
Comment: an excellent read. Didn't want it to end and had trouble putting it down. I would definitely recommend reading the Pillars of the Earth first.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Compelling Historical Fiction
Comment: I had never read any of Follet's work before this book. Initially, I had trouble getting into this book because Follet's prose really rubbed me the wrong way. I found the characters and plot to be immediately compelling but sometimes the overly simplistic, almost childish, writing style was so bad as to take me out of the story altogether. However, this problem lessened and gradually disappeared over the course of the story as the characters aged. Perhap's Follet was experimenting with trying to match the narrative to the age of the characters. I found this distracting but as I said it was only apparent for the first bit of the book.

A lot of people have hopped all over this book for historical inaccuracies. yes, the book is written in modern English with modern sounding dialogue. Hello people - this book's timeframe is contemporary to that of Chaucer, the middle of the 14th century. Of course Follet didn't write in Middle English. Has anyone tried reading the Canterbury Tales in its original form? It's not impossible but a novel written in Middle English would hardly be bestseller material.

I'll grant that the whole Merthin/Caris plot is highly implausible, placing twentieth century ideas and morality onto a medieval setting. I'm aware of this and it doesn't bother as much as it did some people. After all it is Historical FICTION not a history book.

When it comes to the actual historical details surrounding Feudal lordship and serfdom I found this book to be very useful. Professors can spout off all they want about feudal labor, serfs, labor shortages, free tenancy, and higher wages resulting from depopulation but all these ideas are rather vague and abstract to the twety-first century mind. this book did an excellent job of putting these abstract concepts into a the framework of practical examples using the characters in the story. I feel like I am able to better visualize the day to day workings of feudalism because of it.

All in all I enjoyed this book. It wasn't the best book I ever read and it certainly wasn't 100% realistic but I found the characters to be compelling and the plot to be engrossing. I especially praise the depth of Follet's characters; I hated the villians with a passion and was rooting for the good guys - which is what I want from this type of book. However, at that the characters weren't cardboard cutouts. The good guys had flaws and the bad guys could be sympathetic on occasion.

It's a pretty quick read for 1000 pages and I was never bored.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Great follow-up to Pillars
Comment: This was a good book, well written and able to keep my interest. I must confess that I enjoyed Pillars of the Earth better, but this was still very well done.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: world without end/book
Comment: This is the sequal to Pillars of the Earth. I was looking forward to reading this book.
Exciting, interesting and it provided many hours of reading. Learning about history and the making is fun and a good way to pass time.
Ken Follett keeps you reading unitl you find you are at the end of the book and still wanting to learn more.

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