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A review by mattdavenport
The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
2.0
This book came highly recommended to me, so despite it not being in my normal scope of material that I read I tried my best to enjoy. But honestly, I just didn't really like it all that much.
That isn't to say there weren't positives. The way this time period was portrayed seemed very realistic, the detail to the building projects and merchandising trade were well-done and intriguing, and the overall scale of the book, getting to watch character grow from young to normal ages to seasoned or even decrepit was an angle not taken often in literature. There were many characters I enjoyed reading about.
However, even these positives had negative aspects. The time period was realistic I'm sure, but the same old continuous source of problems (bad people higher up to bad things and get away with it because even higher up people are busy) got monotonous and very predictable after a while. The long paragraphs dedicated to architecture were interesting, but I also found myself skimming these parts quite often, as they were more often than not irrelevant to the actual plot and droned on for pages. While there were characters I liked (Philip, Tom, Jack, Aliena), there were many characters that were completely offensive (William, Waleron). And this isn't about characters being likable or unlikable, I enjoy a good villain as often as I enjoy a good protagonists. But, foremost of all their flaws, for a 400K word book almost all of the characters outside of perhaps Phillip and Aliena lacked depth, and almost every character that wasn't completely predictable had a moment completely out-of-character for them. It's a line I feel good authors have to find, and I don't think Follett managed at all. There wasn't a character who's POV I consistently looked forward to. Due to the frame and structure of the book, many characters who made gigantic plot-affecting decisions were introduced just for that purpose and then never shown on-screen again. Lastly, as mentioned before, I think the antagonists were horribly done. I understand what the author was going for, I understand I'm not supposed to have any sympathy for them, but it was just too much. I have no desire to read pages of vivid describing a rape while the POV character revels in it, and there were multiple occurences of this throughout the book with William, with an even more numerous amount of times him having rape-thoughts and vivid described fantasies. That's honestly disgusting, and while yes, rape happens and shouldn't be ignored in literature, I think it does way more harm to attempt to normalize it or write about it in a provocative manner. The other main antagonist, Waleron, is not done very well in my opinion. If you want to say he was a power-hungry manipulator who was using the church as a means to gain that power, I would've bought it happily. But throughout the book, characters say that he is a man of faith who just has a different interpretation, and it's a little insulting. Aside from that, Waleron himself gives absolutely no indications or actions that would suggest he is a man of faith, other than Phillip occasionally saying he thinks Waleron is one deep down. But the final chapter of the book would indicate that Waleron actually is faithful and repentant, and this strikes me as horribly set up.
Moving on from the characters, the writing was decent. The exposition was well written, the prose good, and most of the book was written well enough for me to have no problems with flow or continuing desire to read. That being said, it was certainly very very far from fantastic or award-worthy. The dialogue specifically was often painfully bland. He seemed to do a very good job portraying character's internal monologues, but once characters actually had to interact the sentences became awkward and unrealistic, even comical at times. More importantly, the pacing of the plot was horrendous. Yes, I realize he's trying to cover around 40-50 years of events in one book. But within that scope, you had better realize you can't spend half of the book on a few years of minor quarreling and set up, then breeze through decades of important plot-altering political changes and character development in a matter of pages and expect me to be okay with that.
Overall, the writing quality merits a 3/5 from me, and the world building would give that rating a boost as well. But the dialogue, depth of characters, frustrating pacing, repetitive but irritating continuum of minor problems, the length of time I dedicated to this book for the eventual outcome, and the insulting vulgarity to my senses at several instances leave me with a rather bitter taste in my mouth regarding this book. It is far from a 1 star, for that would imply that I didn't get any pleasure from the book and that's not true, I passively enjoyed reading it enough to want to see the end. But 2/5 I think very accurately describes how I felt about Pillars of the Earth (I'm sorry Justin :/ )
That isn't to say there weren't positives. The way this time period was portrayed seemed very realistic, the detail to the building projects and merchandising trade were well-done and intriguing, and the overall scale of the book, getting to watch character grow from young to normal ages to seasoned or even decrepit was an angle not taken often in literature. There were many characters I enjoyed reading about.
However, even these positives had negative aspects. The time period was realistic I'm sure, but the same old continuous source of problems (bad people higher up to bad things and get away with it because even higher up people are busy) got monotonous and very predictable after a while. The long paragraphs dedicated to architecture were interesting, but I also found myself skimming these parts quite often, as they were more often than not irrelevant to the actual plot and droned on for pages. While there were characters I liked (Philip, Tom, Jack, Aliena), there were many characters that were completely offensive (William, Waleron). And this isn't about characters being likable or unlikable, I enjoy a good villain as often as I enjoy a good protagonists. But, foremost of all their flaws, for a 400K word book almost all of the characters outside of perhaps Phillip and Aliena lacked depth, and almost every character that wasn't completely predictable had a moment completely out-of-character for them. It's a line I feel good authors have to find, and I don't think Follett managed at all. There wasn't a character who's POV I consistently looked forward to. Due to the frame and structure of the book, many characters who made gigantic plot-affecting decisions were introduced just for that purpose and then never shown on-screen again. Lastly, as mentioned before, I think the antagonists were horribly done. I understand what the author was going for, I understand I'm not supposed to have any sympathy for them, but it was just too much. I have no desire to read pages of vivid describing a rape while the POV character revels in it, and there were multiple occurences of this throughout the book with William, with an even more numerous amount of times him having rape-thoughts and vivid described fantasies. That's honestly disgusting, and while yes, rape happens and shouldn't be ignored in literature, I think it does way more harm to attempt to normalize it or write about it in a provocative manner. The other main antagonist, Waleron, is not done very well in my opinion. If you want to say he was a power-hungry manipulator who was using the church as a means to gain that power, I would've bought it happily. But throughout the book, characters say that he is a man of faith who just has a different interpretation, and it's a little insulting. Aside from that, Waleron himself gives absolutely no indications or actions that would suggest he is a man of faith, other than Phillip occasionally saying he thinks Waleron is one deep down. But the final chapter of the book would indicate that Waleron actually is faithful and repentant, and this strikes me as horribly set up.
Moving on from the characters, the writing was decent. The exposition was well written, the prose good, and most of the book was written well enough for me to have no problems with flow or continuing desire to read. That being said, it was certainly very very far from fantastic or award-worthy. The dialogue specifically was often painfully bland. He seemed to do a very good job portraying character's internal monologues, but once characters actually had to interact the sentences became awkward and unrealistic, even comical at times. More importantly, the pacing of the plot was horrendous. Yes, I realize he's trying to cover around 40-50 years of events in one book. But within that scope, you had better realize you can't spend half of the book on a few years of minor quarreling and set up, then breeze through decades of important plot-altering political changes and character development in a matter of pages and expect me to be okay with that.
Overall, the writing quality merits a 3/5 from me, and the world building would give that rating a boost as well. But the dialogue, depth of characters, frustrating pacing, repetitive but irritating continuum of minor problems, the length of time I dedicated to this book for the eventual outcome, and the insulting vulgarity to my senses at several instances leave me with a rather bitter taste in my mouth regarding this book. It is far from a 1 star, for that would imply that I didn't get any pleasure from the book and that's not true, I passively enjoyed reading it enough to want to see the end. But 2/5 I think very accurately describes how I felt about Pillars of the Earth (I'm sorry Justin :/ )